


Ecstasy in Winter

by Besagew



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (fear of kissing), Agoraphobia, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Awkward Ben, Awkward Kissing, Awkward Sex, Bad Sex, Ben yeets important things, Disassociation as a symptom of anxiety, Experienced rey, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Food Issues, Good Sex, Knotting, Loss of Virginity, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Miscommunication, Modern AU, Omega Rey, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, Penis In Vagina Sex, Philemaphobia, Resolved Sexual Tension, Shower Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Virgin Ben Solo, Virginity, but then, mental health, mixing these two kinks in a cauldron to see what comes out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2020-09-06 01:10:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20282905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Besagew/pseuds/Besagew
Summary: At 31, Ben has never been in a relationship. Actually, he's never even kissed anyone. When the subject of past relationships come up, he lies by omission. As an Alpha, he believes he has failed his designation. He is afraid of not being good enough, and could never act upon his attraction to omegas. That is, until he meets Rey.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is also a fill for this prompt: “Rey has a one night stand with Ben Solo, the hot, moody, and cocky son of her boss. It's the most awkward lay of her entire life. He doesn't want to admit it was his first everything. He is mortified and leaves without saying a word in the morning. Rey thinks this further proves that Ben Solo is a selfish asshole and womanizer.”

“And don't think the garden loses its  
ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”

\- Rumi

Ben Solo does not think about sex. He doesn’t think about dating or getting married and having children. He doesn’t think about kissing or holding another person in his arms.

He accepted years before that those things were impossible for him, for reasons clearly organized in a box in his mind. This is his reality, decided and filed away forever. It’s better for him to be alone.

At first, he was simply not interested. The kids his age began to look at each other and then started dating and marrying. During those life steps, he had been an onlooker, left-footed and left behind.

Ben has never looked at a person and liked them enough to make the effort, so in some fundamental way, he didn’t understand what drove them.

He expressed as Alpha very late in adolescence, when he was seventeen, years after most Alphas and Omegas were already settled into their rare designations.

Ben as a teenager was troubled, full of oversensitive pain that found expression only in anger. He was easily overwhelmed; sometimes he threw things, broke things and screamed, and didn’t know why he did it when he knew it would make people hate him. He simply opened up and it spilled out.

Resentful and ashamed, he spent time alone.

And so he spent his first rut alone as well, back when he didn’t know he even could be in rut. All he knew was, at seventeen, he walked the streets for hours, searching for something, something he needed, but couldn’t find.

Aggression drove him in his search, a kind of teenage rage that had no source. He wanted to punch someone, anyone. A man at the corner store looked at him sideways and Ben snapped, punching him solidly in the face, grinding him to the ground.

After a crazed moment of victory, Ben let the man go, stumbling back. And then he ran away, ran until he was exhausted.

He didn’t ever find what he needed, that first rut.

When he came home, his mother understood at once. When she saw the blood on his knuckles, she put him on suppressants to tame the violence inside him.

He needed that control.

His parents separated because of him, and he was sent away to Jedi Camp to live with his uncle because his mother and father couldn’t stand the sight of him one more day.

He needed control for what had happened when he lived with Luke. For the years afterward where he was lost. The years of working for Snoke.

Even while he was deep in the worst part of his life and he fleetingly thought of dating, he knew better than to involve anyone else in his black hole of a life. That he would need to get better before he even thought of doing that, whatever _getting better_ meant.

And maybe it was that thought in the back of his mind, of _getting better_ and having a happier life, that was one of the last things he kept hold of.

He’s only recently found his way back—to his family, to something other than self-hatred. His thirties have been better so far than his twenties.

But that leaves him with lost time, so much of it. And there is still fear. He is better now—he’s in therapy, he’s medicated. He knows now that the only noble idea he had in the dark part of his life—that idea of saving other people from having to deal with him by refusing to consider romance—was fucked up and has damaged him.

There are things about his body that he is neutral about—his size, musculature, and height are at least what an Alpha should be like. His hair is okay.

But there are more negatives. He has a bowlegged walk. His nose needs its own social security number. He can’t grow anything more than a goatee even if he is held at gunpoint.

He has no experience with women.

One of his only glimpses was at Luke’s Jedi Camp in the summer, after a game of spin the bottle late at night. He had been terrified during the game, the bottle glinting with the threat of his demise, but he had steeled his resolve and spun it anyway.

It stopped, pointing at a girl he’d never spoken to before. For just a split second, the girl looked disgusted, but she covered it up by rubbing her palms on her thighs.

“I’m tired of playing this game,” she says loudly, looking right at him. “I’m going to bed.”

Rejected even as a dare. He spends the rest of the night swimming endless laps across the camp lake, half trying to escape the horrible look on her face that had branded itself on his mind, half hoping he would drown in the darkness.

But at last, he had emerged on the shore, exhausted and shaking, empty of everything.

Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the rejection so badly, but she hadn’t even known him. He didn’t even like her. But she must have known. She could feel the rage inside him. That his parents sent him away for it.

He pretended like he was above it, that it was beneath his concern. It helped that he was incapable of developing a crush the way his friends described it. Or maybe he was just good at crushing those feelings before they could grow into something that would make him lose control.

Then came the years of darkness where he wasn’t worthy of it, where he hated himself so much, he didn’t let himself even think of it. Whenever he met an Omega in person, he forced himself not to look at them, punishing himself because he knew he was a monster.

It’s only in his thirties that he tries again. He steels himself for weeks and enters a bar. Just to see.

It is a mid-city bar on a Friday night. It takes him many minutes to gather up the willingness to speak to one of the women there. He feels as if the back of his head is vibrating off, or as if he is staring at himself from the outside looking in. Judging himself on how his hand rests on the bar—too casual? Do other Alphas lean on the bar?—judging how he stands out from the rest like a bullseye.

They know. He knows the others can tell. They know he is an Alpha who has not even kissed a girl at the ripe age of 31.

And how would he explain it? What do you say to a woman, an Omega?

"Oh, by the way, I've never been on a date before. Never been kissed before, either. The only girl who was supposed to was so disgusted she looked like she wanted to vomit. But I'm trying again, now, with you. I've invited you to be part of this peak nightmare scenario. I've decided to foist this upon you on our first encounter. Congratulations."

Desperately, after a few shots at small talk go nowhere, he finds himself drunk enough for it. He decides to be completely honest with a Beta woman seated next to him.

"I've never kissed anyone before,” he says. “I've never been on a date."

She looks startled, and then deeply uncomfortable. "What do you want me to do about it?"

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

"Sorry, that’s just too weird,” she laughs, sour alcohol on her breath. “An old virgin Alpha? No offense, but why didn’t you take care of that as a teenager, when you started your ruts?”

He doesn’t know why he never had.

She shakes her head. “A big boy like you is gonna lose control his first time, run wild and rut some poor thing to death. People are out here just trying to get laid, you know. You're bringing me down."

He reigns in his rage. "It's not... I never—"

"Sorry, sweetie. But no one here wants to deal with that."

And the worst part—the look in her eye isn't annoyed so much as pitying. She pities him. He is pathetic. And frightening.

He doesn’t blame them. He knows he is an Alpha who is a failure to his designation. He gathers up his pride and leaves, and never darkens the doorstep of another bar or club.

He doesn't need to think about it. The subject doesn't come up much, especially as he gets older. The only one who still brings it up occasionally is his mother, who looks sadder every time she does.

"I just want you to be happy," she tells him.

"You think I can't be happy on my own? That I'm not enough on my own?"

"No, and you know that. I just want you to experience the full range of human experiences. I want the best for my son."

"So I'm not really human unless I date.”

“I just want you to be happy, and I know you’re not. How could an Alpha be happy without a mate?”

“I’m probably asexual, so it doesn’t fucking matter! Leave it alone!” he snaps.

And there’s that anger that proves the rule. He can’t control his emotions, even with all the help he has now, so how could he control his body? How could he be good for someone, even if he did like someone enough to risk it?

That is the sum total of his experience to date. One girl who hated even looking at him, and a woman who pitied him but told the truth he already knew.

He puts it out of his mind. Porn is still enough for him, those rare times he feels a craving to touch another person. He’s survived this long. Sometimes, especially on birthdays, he thinks about it. Thinks about hiring professional help, someone who could teach him… but no, that’s even more humiliating than things as they are. Having to explain it to a stranger.

When he falls asleep at night, he curls an arm around his pillow. A hurt blossoms in his chest like a horrible tree that only grows and grows and casts a shadow on his every day, its roots jammed down deep in him, feeding on his life.

He missed his chance. He missed it, and he'll never get it back. He had a chance when he was young, but now he's too old. He will always be alone.

He works through grief for the lost years, and his private shame.

And it's all fine. He’s accepted it. He’s almost content.

Until he sees her.

She's working for his father, a mechanic at his shop. She's one of those youths that his parents took under their wing because they failed with him. He resents them still, hates that they come over for family dinner on Sundays, hates that they fill some need that his parents have.

He's the child they did not choose among those his parents willingly chose. They are stuck with him, and decided to nurture these others, go out of their way for them.

(His therapist says this is bullshit. He’s working on it.)

He’s dropping something off for his dad when he sees her. Well, her ass at first. Working under the hood of a truck, she is up on her toes, arm reaching inside.

She is dressed in dark slacks and a polo shirt with his father’s logo on it. Omega, he knows. He is so sensitive that he could close his eyes and point at her, wherever she is. Her scent is—

_Fuck_—

With what he can see if her face, she’s grimacing, but completely focused. Dark hair, unconsciously graceful movements. He watches her climb up onto the bumper to get more leverage.

He wants to be a truck. 

Or maybe better—he can just imagine, stepping up behind her, putting his hands on her hips and squeezing her until she goes still like a bird. So aware of him, but not unwelcoming. Cautious, but knowing from his scent what he is and what he can do for her. How he can take care of her. She’d press back into him shyly.

He’d push into her from behind like that, with her just like that. Peel her clothes aside to see her ass in the air, feed his cock into her inch by inch until she’s his, she’s just his. Hear her sweet little gasps, make her feel so fucking good.

He’d do it all for her, she wouldn’t have to do anything but take him, brace herself while he pounded all his pent-up lust into her, what he’d saved all for her, only for her, his sweet mate, waiting for him—

“Hey, Ben!” his dad snaps a finger in front of Ben’s face.

Ben jumps, nearly punching his dad out in reflex.

Knowing he needs to distract his dad or he’ll know, Ben thrusts the plastic bag into his hands and growls, “I'm going to start charging you delivery.”

He’s glad he decided to wear a light coat even though it’s early autumn.

His dad usually gets distracted by talk of money, but Ben knows he didn’t fool him this time, especially when his dad raises an eyebrow with a smug smirk, glancing over at the Omega woman.

“Am I interrupting something, kid?”

Ben ignores him and goes inside the shop’s waiting area, and then into the small back room where they eat, setting out the food.

He never loses control like that, not on suppressants. He’s never reacted like that to just a scent. His hands are shaking.

Without looking at his dad, he picks at his chow mein. 

“Do you like her?” his dad asks quietly after a few minutes of silent eating, and Ben despises the hopeful tone in his dad’s voice. 

Yes.

It’s none of his business.

“Her name’s Rey,” his dad says, eyeing Ben hopefully. “I took her on because I needed more help. And she’s good.”

Ben _knows_ she’s good. “You thought you’d hire a female Omega when you knew I’d be coming around.” 

“It’s not like that, kid,” he grumbles. “Not everything’s about you, you know. She needed a job, too, and I figured it was a win-win. And hell, If my kid happened to like a sweet, nice, good-looking girl like her on top of that… well, I wouldn’t throw a fit about it.”

“She’s an Omega and working here.” Not that she shouldn't, but....

“Protective, huh?” His dad smirks again.

Ben digs his nails of his free hand into his palm.

“You know I only have old farts here. The couple Alphas working for me are mated. We wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

Ben says nothing, but relaxes minutely, still stabbing his food.

His dad leans back, overly casual as he throws out, “You know, if you dated her, you could be the one looking after her.”

Ben finally looks at him. “It’s not happening.”

His dad just raises his eyebrows, chewing. “Huh. And why is that?”

Ben says nothing. 

“She’s single. You could at least try talking to her, kid. What’s the worst that can happen?”

She’d see right through him.

The subject drops. If Ben takes lunch to his dad’s shop a little more often to try to catch a glimpse of her, Han only smirks at him, and Ben manages to slip in and out so as to fend off an introduction.

Just to catch her scent every few days. Just to see her at a distance is enough. It’s like looking at a panther with iron bars between them—he gets a thrill of excitement and it’s still safe, no chance of contact. He feels a little creepy, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

He wants her, but he knows he’ll never have her. She seems so at ease and worldly, and knows exactly what she must want. He knows she’s better than him—smiling to herself, going back to her phone, probably texting her friends, probably her boyfriend, probably many handsome debonair men who are just waiting to date this angel girl....

He imagines telling her that he is a virgin, and imagines that look of faint disgust and pity on her face, and he becomes so angry he has to go to the gym and punch a bag for hours.

It’s as if she’s the embodiment of every Alpha instinct he ever suppressed for years, coming back all at once to destroy him.

At night, he dreams about her. He runs through a forest of towering trees, searching, searching as he always does in his ruts. She teases him, and makes him wait so long he starts to sob, but then he catches her. They melt together until she is astride him, parted around him like a warm river. And she is so beautiful, looking down at him with a smile. She wants him, loves him. She wants to be with him always.

He stays in bed when he usually rises. He's almost paralyzed from that blossomed hurt, and the cold reality that he was meant to live this life completely alone settles into his bones, so deep. 

He's a virgin. No one has ever wanted him, and he can't imagine that she would think so little of herself. That she would overlook how unlovable he is. That she would take leftovers, castoffs.

It would be pity. If she went on a date with him, even if she agreed, she would find out the truth somehow, and pity him.

_Maybe_, comes the devilish thought. _Maybe there's another way._

He could just not tell her.

It's very unusual for an Alpha man to be a virgin in his thirties. She would expect him to be experienced. If he studied hard, maybe he should just fake it? Never mention it?

It isn't an impossible suggestion. 

Better not risk it, he decides. 

But then he comes to dinner with his parents one Sunday, and she's there, and he has never hated his dad more for doing this to him.

Inviting her to dinner so he has to meet her.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s something in the air at Han’s shop. Like a hint of something delicious that someone had wafted through the shop and then hidden away again. But it’s not food, she knows that at once. 

It’s a _snacc_. Someone at the shop was Alpha, and he was apparently super hot, and he had been standing right here, and she has missed the show. 

She pauses in the tiny break room, breathing deep. It’s incredibly subtle; he must wear blockers or use suppressants, or both, but he’d spent enough time in this room that she can still draw him into her lungs.

“Was someone just here?” she asks Han, aiming for idle curiosity. 

Han cracks a fortune cookie open.

“My kid,” Han says, looking deeply pleased in a way she’d only see him be after winning a hand of cards. “He just left. Listen to this: _‘A dream of yours will come true.’_ Now _that’s_ a fortune.”

“Your kid?” she says casually, resting her hand on the back of the empty chair. 

“My son, Ben. He brought me lunch. Have his cookie, he never finishes his.”

Han always offers her food. And she always accepts. At once, she fishes the uneaten fortune cookie out of the plastic bag and unwraps it. When she cracks it open, she throws one half of it in her mouth, chewing, and reads:

_ “You must work hard to find what you are missing.” _

“That kid’s still single,” Han says to the wall. “Don’t know when he’s going to settle down, and it’s driving his mother crazy.”

She can tell by his scent that he’s single; she doesn’t need Han to say it. He’s unmated, unclaimed. And more than that, he’s searching, restless. He’s a hunter.

She doesn’t need to hear Han say it, but it’s good to have it confirmed. 

Rey smells him at the shop later, too, that phantom feeling of Hot Ben’s presence every once in a while. She always seems to miss him when he stops by.

And then one day, she sees him. How she knows it’s him from across the parking lot, she doesn’t know, but she knows it’s him with an instinct that defies logic. He’s tall, taller than Han. He has dark hair and a long coat.

He’s already turning from her, but she has the feeling that he had been looking at her. 

A shiver goes down her spine. It is cold outside, the first snow of the year dusted on the ground, but she’s feeling a little warm.

The hunter. He’s found her.

Unbidden, she imagines assuming lordosis in plain view of everyone in the parking lot, her head down low and quiet but her thighs brazen and raised, waiting for him. Waiting for the slow heavy walk of his approach, the way he walks a circle all around her to see her from every possible angle, all of her, waiting for his approval. She’s naked, frozen and trembling in his sight, and he’s been chasing her so long, but he’s finally caught her. Touch, he’s touching her, his hand on her spine tracing down, just barely there. _Good_, he says, and she knows she belongs—it’s _him_, she’s good for him, he’s going to give her his cock, his knot, she deserves to have it—

A car door slams. 

Rey opens the door to the nearest car in the lot and slips inside, resting her head in the steering wheel. She’s hiding, not certain where that reaction had come from. She isn’t near her heat, not yet. So what the hell was that?

It’s a lot.

Enjoying the sights, taking in his scent, daydreaming… those are all one thing. But walking inside? Talking to him?

_Do I want to do this again?_ Her heart clenches, remembering.

By the time she goes inside just to see him closer, he’s already left through the door on the far side.

—

Rey arrives to dinner early, eager but nervous to be part of a real sit-down dinner.

Han and Leia make her feel welcome around their beautifully set table while Han finishes coating the ribs with sauce. Leia offers her a sneak peek at dessert that Rey is incapable of refusing, and so Rey finds herself with a chocolate chip cookie in hand, wriggling her socked toes into the carpet to warm them.

It smells good in their house. _Maybe it’s because Leia is an Alpha_, she thinks. Or maybe it’s just the novelty of home-cooked baked goods.

“The trick to good ribs is to peel the membrane off on the back side before you cook them,” Han tells her. “It’s only a little extra work.”

She’s sure it is. But she’s never cooked anything more expensive than Mac & Cheese, and the last time she tried to learn to cook even a cheap steak, she had been paralyzed by how much money she would be wasting if she ruined it. Enough money to buy a week’s worth of food, easily. Cooking is stressful.

Rey keeps these thoughts to herself. “I’ll take your word for it, master chef. It smells good, at least.”

Han seems pleased with her, and her heart sparkles. Then Han scratches the back of his head.

“Er, just to let you know, my kid Ben, I mentioned him before. Anyway, he’s probably gonna show up, too. It’s a family dinner.”

“Oh. Good. Can’t wait to meet him.”

_Oh, god, he is going to be here._ A family dinner.

Suddenly, the chair is a little less comfortable. She’s out of place, wearing socks in a strange house. Should she have said “yes” to the cookie? 

Yes, okay, she should always say “yes” to the cookie. She’ll never regret that. But....

The son is coming home. Their real son, the one Han calls "kid." And he’s going to find her trying on his life—sitting in his chair, eating his porridge, and sleeping in his bed.

Rey goes red. No, _not_ sleeping in his bed.

She doesn’t belong here and she shouldn’t have come.

When Han and Leia’s son lets himself into their brownstone, taking off his coat, she catches a glimpse of him in the shadowed entryway.

_ Large man_, she thinks. _ He’s tall. _

“You’re late, kid,” Han complains. “Sit down so we can eat.”

“The New York public transportation system is not under my control,” Ben answers, muffled by removing his scarf.

And when Rey hears his voice, she thinks: _handsome_. She doesn’t know why she thinks that—she hasn’t seen what he looks like. But he has a handsome, deep voice, unique and resonant.

Rey shifts in her seat, trying to downplay her hyper-awareness of his entrance.

By the time he sits, Rey’s mind has already cycled through a fantasy future, one that is technically possible:

The one where he sees her, where he likes her as much as she likes the feeling of his body in the hallway. How she liked his scent at the shop. They could date and maybe marry each other and she would be part of this family for real, and not just because Han has a soft spot for unfortunates. Not just because she’d snuck her way inside.

It would be nice if he liked her. It would be so nice if that worked out.

She’s never been that lucky, though, and nothing in her life had ever come that easily.

When his hand pulls back the chair next to hers, she thinks again: _ large man_. And when he settles into place, she is oppressively aware of him beside her with a weight in her belly. She thinks of what she thought of in the parking lot at the shop, just from the sight of him. If anything, it’s harder to control now.

“Ben, this is Rey,” Han says. “She works for me at the shop.”

Ben turns his attention to her, and she finally has an excuse to stare at his face.

Ben Solo is dark and arresting, an interesting blend of his parents, with a wide mouth, his father’s nose, and the soulful eyes of his mother. There are snowflakes in his black, soft-looking hair. His gaze is like a punch to her stomach, and it lingers.

_ Welp. _Crush officially developed.

And now Rey has to deal with this on top of her paralyzing need to earn Han and Leia’s affection.

He holds his hand out to shake, and it’s awkward to take it across their bodies while they’re both still sitting down. 

His hand envelops hers, warm, and then she smells him. Feels a shock in her fingers when they touch, palm to palm.

_Alpha._ Like his mother.

Rey takes a deep breath. He’s on suppressants, but it’s still obvious. She can make out his natural musk underneath the acrid medical odor. It’s hard to make it out, smelling like the most delicious food in the world, mixed with the poisonous scent of blockers.

Like something that would kill her, but she’d be happy to make that trade if she could only be allowed to taste it. Even just his adulterated scent makes her light-headed.

It triggers in her a blossoming sensation, an automatic change in her body. It’s out of her control, her body thinking about preparing for him.

Oh, god.

Leia coughs, her eyes dancing, and Ben hastily drops Rey’s hand. Han has a smirk on his face, but when he opens his mouth, Leia elbows him.

“You’re a mechanic,” Ben says. 

“How did you guess? Or did Han tell you?” Rey asks.

He shakes his head. “You smell like—” At this point, he seems to realize what he’s saying and presses his lips together, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

Rey feels his awkwardness.

She smells like oil and grease and asphalt. It’s mortifying that he would bring it up. She’d tried to scrub it off of her, and did her best with her nails, but some things she can’t perfectly scrub off. She knows Alphas are sensitive to scents, but it’s nearly a taboo subject to bring up how someone smells.

_He doesn’t like your scent, Omega_, a part of her notes.

“You must just be picking up how _I_ smell, right, kid?” Han interjects, frowning at his son in a _get it together_ kind of way.

Ben nods, still pressing his lips together. “That must be it.”

“Rey just moved here a few months ago,” Leia tells Ben, a little exasperated. “Maybe you could take her to see the sights. Maybe one of the parks?”

Rey flushes. Is this really happening? That fantasy scenario is supposed to be just that, a safe fantasy only in her own head.

Ben stiffens, looking back and forth between Rey and his parents.

“I am hoping to make some new friends,” Rey hurries to say, trying to downplay Leia’s suggestion.

Ben frowns at his mother. “It’s the middle of winter.”

Rey’s heart sinks, but she forces a pleasant expression on her face. _ Alpha doesn’t want you,_ something inside her says. _ But when has anyone wanted you? _

“Good, it means everything’s all decorated. You could go to Rockefeller to see the Christmas tree,” his mother says, frowning back.

“That’s a tourist trap,” Ben says, irritated.

Han is just looking at his son with a strange expression, exasperated and sad. A tension fills the room that Rey doesn’t quite understand.

Screw this. So he doesn’t want to be her friend. Big deal. But he’s an enormous asshole for not even trying to hide it. She isn’t really trying to steal his parents, she thinks, angry and guilty.

“The ribs are so good,” Rey cuts in. “You were right, Han.”

“They’re the only things I make,” Han says, smirking. “The only thing my old man passed on.”

Ben staring at his plate. His mother, who is still glaring at him. Rey notices a sheen of sweat on his brow, and he seems so tense, like he’s on the brink of just standing up and leaving altogether.

What the hell is wrong with her that he can’t even pretend to humor her? He’s just rude. The longer they sit there, the more she dismantles her small, private fantasies of him.

Nothing is ever that easy.

Rey plays it cool through the rest of the dinner. Well, as cool as she can with her stupid hormones kicking in, telling her that she _must_ impress him, she _must_ try to make him see how good she is, that she can be his Omega, if only he stops and really _sees_ her—

_He’s a complete asshole who doesn’t even want to be your friend_, she tells her body. _Forget him. It’s not something you’re getting._

Her body doesn’t listen, still taut as a bowstring, still priming for him. She forces herself not to move even slightly. Eventually, she calms down a little.

She concentrates on serving herself more food, trying to find the amount that will satisfy her but won’t make her look too greedy or needy. It’s a hard line to draw, but she thinks she manages it. She eats as neatly as she can.

It isn’t comfortable like she wanted. They try to make her feel welcome, but with every stilted, reluctant comment that comes from their son, she feels like an interloper. 

When dinner is over, Rey is so ready for the miserable awkwardness to end that she begs off staying longer and gathers her coat and boots. 

Han nudges Rey gruffly and Leia hugs her and kisses her cheek, and insists she take some cookies home in a plastic bag. Valiantly, Rey tamps down on the urge to cry. Omegas can have strong reactions to Alphas feeding them, and Rey, with her history of food insecurity, feels this more than most Omegas.

To her surprise, Ben Solo makes to leave immediately as well, and they are both alone in the shadowy anteroom with the sound of soft fabric rustling as they dress. She wonders why he doesn’t want to stay longer, enjoying being the coddled son without her there to ruin their family dynamic.

Who cares. He ruined her dinner, and he doesn’t even want to spend quality time with his parents. He’s the worst kind of person.

Rey calls out one more goodbye to his parents and steps out into the snow. She hears Ben open the door behind her and follow after.

“Rey, wait.”

It isn’t an Alpha command, but there is always a thread of that every time an Alpha gives an Omega an instruction.

It makes her aware of him again, and her irritation gathers again. 

She stops. Turns her head to him, unsmiling. 

“It’s night, and the subway is kind of far. We’re walking the same way, so...”

Why he wants to stretch this awkwardness out even longer, she doesn’t know. She turns without a word.

“I’m sorry about that, back there,” he tries. “You know how parents are.”

“Actually, I don’t,” Rey bites out. “I’m an orphan.”

He rears back as if she slapped him. “I didn’t mean—”

Rey watches him squirm. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She turns again without saying a word.

He follows behind her, boots crunching in the snow. “I just meant… when they were trying to set us up. I hate it so much.”

She tries to stick with her plan of completely ignoring him and going home to mourn, but she finds herself challenging him. “Why?”

There’s a pause, and she’s imagining him_ thinking_. That would be a first for him tonight. “It put you on the spot. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask them to do that.”

Rey is so done with him, and her fragile half-dreams that spun into fairy crystal when she first felt the promise of him in the shop and then the hallway are so dead and buried that she no longer cares. She's not sure why she's so disappointed by it when she knew it would happen. She turns and blocks his way.

“Did you ever think that maybe I put them up to it?” Rey asks, willing him to feel the humiliation she felt.

For the second time in the space of a few minutes, he looks shocked. “No,” he says simply.

“Did you ever think that maybe you shouldn’t brush it off when someone offers to be your friend?”

“No,” he says again.

“Would it have killed you to go see that Christmas tree with me?”

He looks grim. “No."

He simply accepts what she says, completely focused on her and listening intently. It’s an Alpha kind of focus, his scent headily contrite to her. 

_Let your Alpha try again_, it says. _He will fulfill your every need._

Yeah, right. That had never happened before, and will never happen. It’s all fine to play pretend, but she’s familiar with the real world.

“I don’t know you at all,” she continues, “and you made me feel like garbage.”

“That’s not what I meant to do.”

“Then think before you speak next time. Think about how other people feel.”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t want them involved,” he says quietly. “If I wanted to flirt with you, I couldn’t do it with them right there.”

Rey blinks. 

“I did want to,” he continues, soft but urgent. “I might have tried to, maybe. If we were alone. But —”

He shakes his head and steps around her, continuing through the spills of light and pools of darkness, the falling snow lighting up like white fireflies in the space between the street lamps and the ground. “It doesn’t matter. I fucked it up.”

He lapses into gloomy silence after that. Maybe he had the same kind of gossamer hopes she had when they met. It makes her bite her lip.

Rey steps forward to join him side-by-side.

“You wanted to flirt with me?” she finally asks.

He glances sideways at her. “Yes. Did you really put them up to it?”

“No,” she says honestly. “But when they were trying to set us up, I wanted you to like me.” _Alpha_. “But then you turned out to be the worst.”

At that, he goes silent in thought, but she feels a tension rising in him. She wonders what it could possibly be when—

“Come to the park with me.” His face is flushed, his breath huffing out in clouds between them.

Rey’s lips curl in a smile. “Not to the big Christmas tree?”

He shakes his head. “That really is a tourist trap. There are better things to do.”

“Doubt it,” she says.

“Better than a Christmas tree surrounded by nothing but business district with the most crowded skating in the tri-state area? There are many things.”

Rey puts on an expression of mock concern. “But it’s the _middle of winter_.”

He pinches his nose with one hand as she laughs.

“I don’t think I’ve said anything right, tonight,” he mutters, and she can actually see how red he is.

“Where would we go, then?” The truth is, she’s seen the tree already. She just wants to know what he will do, and Rey likes to be coaxed.

“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll find out if you… _when_ you come.” His mouth is pressed together, his whole face tense. 

Rey hesitates, remembering how it was during the dinner. How awkward, how unwanted she felt.

“Come with me,” he says.

It isn’t what says that gets her, it’s his body language, so tilted toward her. It’s like he’s studying her. She’s the only one in the world that matters to him. The words on her lips are the only words. She has the feeling that she could really cut him.

Rey blinks, trying to clear it. This must be some Alpha thing she’s never encountered before, a kind of singular, focused attention—

“Please,” he whispers. 

Or maybe it’s not an Alpha thing. Maybe it’s just him.

In answer, she curls her hands around his arm, his winter coat soft under her mittens. “Okay, I’ll come.”

He stiffens when she touches him, and only relaxes a little as they walk along. After a few blocks, he covers her mittened hand on his arm with his—at first he covers her hand gingerly, but then more firmly when he discovers her hand is cold.

_Alpha cares if you’re cold. He’s dedicated to you. He’s yours._

No one had ever been hers. And he isn’t, either. It is just his scent that says that, a little. 

“You know, I stole something from you,” she tells him as they walk.

He glances at her. “What, like from my mom’s house?”

Rey shakes her head. “I stole your fortune. You left a fortune cookie behind with Han instead of eating it, so I took it.”

“You did?” he asks, sounding breathless.

Feeling a little guilty, she says, “Han said I could have it. You know it’s bad luck to eat Chinese and not read your fortune, right?”

“It is?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“I never heard that,” he says, staring at her. “What did the fortune say?”

“It’s my fortune now,” she answers. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“You have to tell me.”

“No, I don’t,” she teases, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll give it back if you earn it.”

When she glances at him, lit in yellow street light, he’s staring into the middle distance, his breath naked and visible in the air. By its rhythm she can tell he’s breathing quickly. 

_ Alpha likes you. He wants you to be safe and warm. _

“Then I’m going to,” he says, voice a little unsteady.

They’ve reached the intersection with the subway, and she realizes she needs to cross the street and use the other entrance so she can take a train going the opposite way he’s going.

Rey catches his sleeve, looking up at him. She wants to catalog the snowflakes in his hair. She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Thanks for walking me, Ben.”

He just looks at her, wide-eyed. Rey wishes he would lean toward her. She would kiss him, but he's so far away.

She wants to ask him home with her, too. The thought of being alone in her apartment with the scent of him still on her clothes—

“Let me borrow your phone,” she finally says.

Looking a little confused, he unlocks it and gives it to her. She texts a message to her own number and hands it back. Then she smiles at him, feeling her phone vibrating with the message in her pocket with a feeling of triumph, and crosses the street.

Before she gets so far underground that she loses service, he sends her another text:

**Ben: **Tell me what my fortune says.

She smiles, pressing the phone to her face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I’ve been editing this because your comments are so good 😭 next up: Ben’s POV of his first date, things happen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben’s adventures in navigating a crush while managing an anxiety disorder continue. (Also Ben insisted on another chapter between the dinner and the date, so that’s what we’re doing.)

As he steps into his condo later, he doesn't know how he pulled it off. How he somehow got her number after everything he said at dinner. The first girl’s number he’s ever had in his phone. 

He does his usual routine to get ready for bed, this time with his phone in one hand.

**Ben: **Tell me what my fortune says.  
  
**Rey: **no 😊  
  
**Rey: **You abandoned it! The poor thing is mine now  
  
**Ben: **At least tell me what the first word is?  
  
**Rey: **no 😌

She gave him her number even after he froze at the sight of her in his mom’s house, and after he said all those stupid things. 

She is just… so _ pretty. _The sight of her face up close muddled his already scrambled brain.

It was excruciating, the way his parents pushed Rey toward him, especially after she said she was only looking to make friends. She obviously wasn’t interested in him, but even as his heart sank in familiar bitterness, his parents wouldn’t take her obvious hints. Ben almost started a fistfight with his dad just to change the subject. 

Her scent was so hard and her spine was so stiff, he was sure it was ruined before he even had a chance to talk to her alone. With nothing to lose, he just opened his mouth and—it worked. Something had worked; he still isn’t sure what it was he did right. Rey was hurt, but then she gave him a second chance. 

And his sweet girl—the girl whose scent haunts his days—is not only beautiful, she is forgiving as well. She is an absolute light.

Ben remembers the way her face looked at the end, the way she licked her lips before she took his phone. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear, staring up at him with that small smile. The way she smelled after unbending toward him, just raw and utterly unashamed, so Omega. 

Lush, perfect.

Ben is so fucked—he_ does _ like her. The amount her pheromones promised him that he would like her, he likes her that much. He likes her a lot more than he’s comfortable with, and it's a new sensation, not unlike being flung into space.

When her texts pause, the doubts begin to creep in. 

If he messes this up, will it take thirty more years to find another person he likes this way? The many ways that he can fuck this up (and the slim chance of him not doing so) absolutely eat at him.

That night, he touches himself by habit, and this time he can’t help but think of her. He can’t remember ever thinking of any specific Omega he’d ever met; he felt embarrassed if he thought of someone, as if they would somehow find out. Somehow, the appeal of people he knows has never overcome that embarrassment. 

But for the first time in his life, he can’t help himself. Rey. He thinks of her, the one he knows. Remembers her scent.

Fingers shaking with that strange shyness, he feels the sparking intensity of the thought that she is real. That she is in this city and she touched his arm, and that she might touch him again.

He thinks vague yearning thoughts— putting his arms around her and holding her, listening to her talk and laugh. He wonders what kissing is like, how he would feel to press his face to her gland. Just imagining it sends him spiraling in a real way he’s never felt before.

Ben wishes she would appear and just hold him. They might fall together like their instincts tell them to do, and they might just naturally fall together, lost in kisses...

It would be so generous of her, and maybe… maybe it would feel good to her, too. Maybe she would like him, maybe she would like his cock, the way he felt in her. If he held her close, surrounded by her scent. Maybe she would smile at him.

Ben gasps, his arm working, and the thought that it might feel good to her—a flash memory of her biting her lip—makes his vision go dark at the edges.

If she wouldn’t mind letting him be inside, to knot her and fill her up—

It could really happen. She gave him her number. 

“Rey,” he pants, lost.

When he comes, he knots in the open air, something he hasn’t done out of rut in a decade. It surprises him, almost hurts, it’s so intense, and he desperately squeezes it to simulate what he imagines it would feel like if it was her. If she would let him, if only it wasn’t impossible—

She texts him a cute good night as he’s struggling with the pleasure of the most intense, continuing orgasm he’s ever had, and a knot that won’t go down. He jolts in shock and excitement at the home screen notification on his phone, and buries his face in his pillow.

It’s so plausible that he could—that she might—and then another wave of pleasure takes him under, wiping his mind of his fear for a few blissful seconds where all seems possible.

His breathing slows, and he drowses.

He doesn't want to do it wrong. 

He carefully responds to her goodnight text and starts to drift off, staring idly at the steel manacles hanging from the corners of his bed.

At least he’s better with texting than talking in person. It's easier when he has time and space to think of what a normal person would say. And for the first time in many years, he has something to smile about when his phone vibrates.

Ben avoids going to his dad’s garage. Not seeing her too soon is wise, he thinks. And besides, staying away is the only surefire way to not ruin things like he did before. He’ll go see her soon, but for now, that cold river of fear that never truly leaves him has found a new gully to overflood.

He has a hard time sleeping at night, the thought of seeing her a bright coal sitting in his chest. Feeling pleasure and blind terror in waves. It’s ridiculous. It’s a mess. He’s only spoken to her once.

He doesn’t tell his parents any of this, or that he’s exchanged numbers with her, or that they’re texting. It’s none of their business and he doesn’t want to hear their comments. And after a lifetime of disappointing them in every arena of his life, he doesn’t want to get their hopes up. It’s not something he’s ready to talk about with Maz, either.

But within a week, his dad does something he’s never done before—he asks Ben to bring him lunch. The lunches were always something Ben did on his own, something of a long silent apology for being such a shitty son.

He had asked his therapist how he could mend things, and he had meant it as a rhetorical question, a “look how impossible this is, everything is ruined” question. But his therapist had only adjusted her thick glasses.

“Nothing can get better when you’re not spending time together, kiddo,” she pronounced.

So he’s been bringing his father lunch. And so far, neither of them have died. 

Until now, that is.

Han’s order is suspicious—two different sandwiches, two drinks. Ben frowns, hand clenching into a fist; as he places the order, fear licks the back of his neck.

He should text his dad to go fuck himself and then go home where he has more than enough work waiting for him.

But one thought keeps him moving—if it really is for her, wouldn’t she go hungry if he didn’t? He can’t bear the thought.

Ben hopes he can slip in and out of her workplace like he did before. The moment he is near the slightest scent of her at the garage, he is caught short by it like he’s smelling it for the very first time. Knowing it’s foolish, he allows himself to stand and breathe her in.

But then the wind picks up, and he sees her head jerk back from the car she’s working on, looking straight at him. 

Heart pounding, Ben lifts one hand. To his delight, she waves back and smiles, a huge smile that seems genuine, and she walks over to him, wiping her hand on a cloth.

"Hi, Ben," she says.

"Rey.” An ache inside him dissolves all at once, replaced by a sharp frisson of embarrassment. He is smiling, and he knows his smile looks goofy, so he stops. 

Lifting one hand to his hair to make sure his ears are hidden from sight, he holds up the bag, feeling foolish. Rey opens her mouth, but the door to the shop opens behind Ben.

“Oh, good, kid. Took you long enough,” Han says dryly, taking the bag and going to the usual break room. 

Ben feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise (but is not surprised) when Rey follows them in as well. Ben busies himself with his sandwich while his dad—of course he does—gives the mystery sandwich to Rey. 

And then, to put the cherry on top of the shit cake, his dad doesn’t sit down with them.

"Front desk looked busy. I'll leave you kids to it," Han says, grabbing his sandwich and exiting, not even taking his drink with him.

The front desk had been a ghost town. Rey and Ben look at each other, Ben wanting to die. 

Rey starts laughing. "He's so transparent."

Ben busies himself with his sandwich as if it’s the most complex task in the universe, feeling his ears burn. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Rey asks around a mouthful of sandwich. 

There’s something about an Omega eating the food an Alpha brings them that’s… irresistible. Her scent blooms into shades of happy contentment, like a cat in a spot of sunlight. She stirs up his instincts until he feels slightly drunk with it. 

He is making strides because this time he realizes in time that she doesn’t want to hear that this wasn’t his idea. That it would make her feel bad, like before. 

“I will bring you lunch tomorrow if—if you want,” he says.

Assuming she wants to see you two days in a row, he thinks heartlessly.

“If you’re free,” she says, something like hope on her face. “I’d like that.”

“You would,” he repeats numbly. “Then I will. Tomorrow.”

It’s annoying that maybe his dad had been right about interfering, but Ben is eating with Rey and in the same room as her delicious scent, with the knowledge she’s safe and eating the food he provided her, and the raw pleasure of it is making him forget why it was so important to keep away from her.

"Have you been avoiding coming here?” Rey asks it outright. “You came more often before. I thought I’d see you.”

He feels his face flush that she noticed, and considers telling her that he’s just been busy with work. Instead, he says, "I didn't want to bother you.”

"Bother me? You thought it would bother me if you visited your own father?"

Well, now that she puts it like that, it does sound a little insane. 

"This is where you work. I didn't know if it would be annoying to you."

Rey just smiles. "Visit your dad. He gets lonely."

There’s a stupid twist of jealousy that she would know that. She has things in common with Han Solo that he will never have. His dad finally asked for something from him, his own son, and Ben actually thought he wanted him. But his dad was still just trying to meddle and fix him, as obvious and obnoxious and full of criticism as he is when trying to fix a beat-up car.

“He doesn’t need me,” he hears himself say. “We don’t have much to talk about.”

“I heard him. He was joking yesterday, how you’d forgotten your old man. He might not say it, but he likes it when you come visit.”

“What he likes is trying to fix fuck-ups,” he says bitterly. 

Rey looks absolutely stricken by that for some reason.

Ben’s mind races. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have cursed like that.”

But Rey sets half of her sandwich down, uneaten. She puts one arm around her middle like her stomach is upset. “What do you mean by ‘fixing fuck-ups?’”

“I mean he only asks to see me if he thinks I have a problem. He doesn’t really—I don’t think he—” 

_Likes being around me_.

Luckily, he cuts himself off before he can turn her lunch into a full-blown therapy session. 

“He’s always been busy,” Ben says instead. “But it isn’t a big deal.”

“Oh.” She picks up her sandwich again, and his instincts are grateful that she’s eating again. “I thought you were talking about me for a second. That I was a fuckup.” 

Ben blanches. “Oh, no. Y-you’re not a fuckup, Rey.”

She looks doubtful. “You said Han—”

Ben shakes his head, desperate. “It’s different when it’s kids who aren’t his. He always chooses kids who are really good at something, useful. I wasn’t talking about you.”

After a moment, she seems to relax. “Han seems like one of those older guys who doesn’t like to admit when they like someone.”

“No, yeah, that’s him.” And then he doesn’t know what to say, and is terrified he’ll say something wrong yet again, so Ben chews his food.

“I’m like that, too,” Rey says meaningfully.

He feels he missed something. “You’re like what?”

“I don’t like to admit when I like someone,” she says, staring straight at him. 

“Ah,” he hears himself say intelligently. Does she mean that she’ll never tell him if she likes him? Or is she just making conversation? He feels stupid and slow, like his head is packed with wool. His blood is pounding.

“I like the sandwich,” she says, and then she winks at him teasingly and his heart stops in his chest. 

He is hyper-aware of how quickly he is breathing, how his hands rest in his lap, the imperfections in the tabletop.

She likes the sandwich.

She likes…? Does she like…? 

Does she like him? 

He can feel a part of himself cut away to watch their conversation in the third person, watching and judging the way he breathes from the outside looking in, slowed in time. 

He knows it’s a bad sign. 

The part of himself that’s splintered away and is judging himself is also being judged by another, more disdainful splinter of himself. The more he fractures, the more time seems to slow. 

He doesn’t know why he’s having a panic attack and disassociating, and very distantly, he feels numb and sad about it. She was saying something important. 

Trying to discreetly pinch himself to bring him back to the present moment doesn’t help—it only makes him splinter again to judge that, too.

Ben only manages to stay for a few more minutes before he must retreat. He is puppeting himself like a marionette when he tells Rey he has to return to work, pulling his facial muscles from far away into what he thinks is a smile, and trying to give his voice the right tone. To his relief, she seems to accept it.

He is so far away from himself that he can hardly feel her goodbye when it happens.

She leans up to him, puts her hand on the gland on his neck, gently possessive, and then pulls him down to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Ben.” 

Far away and outside of his own body, he is only aware of an intense embarrassment and unworthiness, like he’s taken someone’s place. He doesn’t deserve this, and she would never do this if she knew the truth about him. 

The pressure on his cheek is incredibly dim. The gland on his neck feels warm and he can still smell her, but the moment was ruined. 

He feels deeply cheated. He was out of his body when it happened, when she pressed her lips to his skin.

“What will you bring me tomorrow? I’ll pay for half.”

He dimly hears himself say, “You won’t pay because I’m making something.” He takes in her pure happiness from a great distance.

As he walks to the train, the episode starts to pass and he finally returns to his own body. Left with only waves of self-loathing so strong he wants to curl up on the sidewalk, he focuses those feelings instead into a deep red rage. 

He screams at a trashcan at the top of his lungs until he’s panting and out of breath and miserable.

Other pedestrians startle at the noise, but hardly anyone looks at him twice, scurrying to avoid him.

Her text is hard to answer. 

**Rey: **Thank you again!! It was sweet of you to think of me. 

_I’m always thinking of you_, he thinks. He remembers her vulnerability, and how she just assumed he was calling her a fuckup, as if that made any sense at all.

**Ben: **You deserve it, Rey.

Exhausted, he rubs his warm gland, wishing he could turn back the clock and really feel her kiss his cheek.

The anxiety took everything from him for all those years, and it still keeps taking and taking. This was the real reason he had avoided his father’s work—not that he doesn’t want to see her (he does, desperately), but he was right to be afraid this would happen. That he could not handle it, even after all the work he’s done. 

He likes her so much. She hinted that she likes him back. But it doesn’t matter. This is just how it is, and his brain will always be like this.

—

No, fuck that. He isn’t giving up.

A few hours later, he’s back from a long run and he feels calmer and focused. It was just because he was taken by surprise. He wasn’t expecting to see her that day, so he wasn’t prepared.

He finishes his work early and spends an hour that evening on his personal calligraphy project, ordering his thoughts and discarding the ones that aren’t helpful to him.

The next day, he is actually prepared.

He brings her lasagna and the satisfaction he gets from watching her eat is stronger with food he’s made with his hands. And for maybe that reason, he’s only nervous for a minute about bringing her homemade food before he sees how much she enjoys it. Han once again only appears long enough to avail himself of food before vanishing, leaving his son alone with her.

“Did you always live here?” she asks, biting into garlic bread.

“Yes. I spent summers upstate.” He’s relieved she asked him a question he’s rehearsed the answer to. He doesn’t mention Luke. “Where did you grow up?”

“Pennsylvania.”

Ben nods slowly, wondering if he should ask her about her accent, or her dead parents. She doesn’t elaborate on her own, even when he is quiet and gives her room, so instead he asks, “Did you always want to work on cars?”

“I wanted…” She stares at her salad and glances up at him. “The truth is, I’m just good at it. With machines, fixing them up. It pays the bills. What I really want…”

Ben holds his breath, willing with all her soul that she finish her sentence.

She does, tentative. “I really want to be a mum. More than anything. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Ben has the clearest image of Rey as a new mother, holding her child for the first time. It’s overwhelming. He wants to be there with her.

“You would be perfect,” he says breathlessly.

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he says. He can feel his breath get shallower, faster. The thought of being her husband. “I can tell. You would be good with kids. And they would lov— they would love you.”

As he fights the tightening in his lungs, he only becomes more anxious. He consciously takes a slow breath. For good measure, he fishes out a ginger candy he’d put in his pocket and pops it in his mouth, the sharp taste grounding him even more.

Rey smile is brittle. “Most people haven’t been encouraging about it.”

“Fuck people.”

She tilts her head. “It’s something that everyone else just… knows about. I like to think that it would just come to me, but I don’t know for sure.”

Ben’s mouth opens and then closes again. “You don’t need practice,” he bursts out, louder than he intended. Ben lowers his voice, heart hammering. “You have what you need. You’re a good person. You know you’ll have to stretch yourself and learn new things, but that's good because you aren’t ever going to take it for granted.”

Rey looks overwhelmed by his speech, and he isn’t sure whether it’s in a good or bad way. “I just wish I had someone older to go to for advice,” she says.

“That’s what your mother-in-law is for.”

“My mother-in-law?”

“Yes, when you get married.” He knows it’s stupid of him, that it’s jumping the gun so much he’s making himself ridiculous, but he can see it so clearly. He knows his mother would help her. “I-if you want to get married, that is.”

“I’ve always wanted to,” she says quietly. 

_Then let’s go, what are we waiting for_? Ben bites his tongue to stop himself from saying something like that, something absolutely premature and drastic.

His hands tremble as he packs up the lunch.

“I’ll see you on Sunday. For our date?” she says.

Ben gets a pang that he won’t see her for a full day, and a pall of dread that he only has one more day to prepare for his first date. 

“Yes, of course.”

And he’s in his own body this time to feel her goodbye—real and heady, the untamed scent of her filling every part of his senses.

”The food was really good, Ben. Thank you.”

She touches his gland again, rubs it slightly, and he wonders at the significance of it. Is it some shorthand he never learned?

The intimacy and shock of it runs down to his toes, and then she eases him down so she can kiss his cheek—not a peck, but a slow lingering press, and then she stays there, not in a hurry to leave him. He thinks she is taking in his scent, luxuriating in it like he is in hers.

More than anything, he wants to just turn his face slightly and taste her lips. From her body language and her scent, he’s sure she wouldn’t mind if he just—but no, he can’t. He has never kissed anyone before, and she would know it at once.

But he can’t help himself. He catches her waist in his hands, anchoring her, and turns his face, the radiating warmth of her cheek drawing him. His lips catch her, aiming for her cheek to return her kiss, but pressing the very corner of her mouth instead. 

Heart beating, he holds his breath, but Rey is only staring at his mouth, dazedly, as if she wants him to continue. He knows in his bones that she wants him to kiss her.

Fear shoots through him. He doesn’t know how to kiss her.

It’s the hardest thing he’s done, but he tears himself away from her perfect scent. Her brow furrows, but he busies his hands and the moment passes. It’s better than her finding out.

The journey back to his condo is spent wondering if kissing the corner of her mouth counts as his first kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the date!! Thank you for reading 🥰


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split the date into two chapters because it was getting long, but the other half will be up on Monday! Thanks for reading ☺️

Ben Solo googles a lot of things.

_ What does it mean when an Omega touches your neck gland? _

He knows about scenting, of course, but it’s one thing to see it in romance scenes in movies and another to know what it means when Rey does it to him.

_“It means she wants your knot, bro. Congrats,”_ reads the top comment.

Ben stares at that comment for a long moment before continuing on.

_“Did your Omega kiss or lick your neck gland? Or did they touch it with their fingers? Did they rub their wrist gland into your neck gland, to try to mix your scents together? The details really matter, here.” _

Ben isn’t sure whether Rey rubbed his neck with her wrist, but all he knows is he still feels surrounded by her, even now in his neat, orderly condo. Her scent is still so strong, it feels like she is physically with him. And their scents are mixed together in such a provocative way, he’s been half-hard since he left her.

_“Scenting is a biological sexual behavior with several functions...”_ begins the wiki page. Ben scans it, but knows what it says already, down to the significance as the beginning of the mating ritual.

He touches his gland. She said she always wanted to get married.

Remembering that, fear and longing mingle freely. 

But surely she didn’t mean that as a hint. She was just talking like normal people do. Making conversation.

He goes back to reading.

_ The touch is used to comfort both the one scenting and the one being scented. It can calm and slow the heart rate of the one being touched, and it also releases oxytocin. _

_ When used to scent an Alpha, it communicates a claiming, a “back-off” signal to other Omegas. _

Ben flushes, thinking of how completely unnecessary that is. He’d needed no help to remain untouched all his life. They weren’t barging down his door.

But it does something to him, the thought that Rey would want to fight off a nonexistent horde of Omegas with a stick to lay claim to him. That she wanted to mark him as hers, even before their date. He touches his neck again, feeling his lips curl into a smile.

He thinks about doing the same to her. Rubbing her skin until she knows she’s his. And everyone else knows, too.

And then, finally, he finds a helpful comment:

_ “No, it’s not really a casual thing. I would definitely never do it to a friend. I wouldn’t do it to a casual hookup, either. And I notice I won’t scent an Alpha unless I’m close to a heat.” _

Ben’s hands go clammy around his phone. 

Rey’s heat.

Is she… is she close to her heat? 

Somehow, he didn’t think of that.

Don’t Omegas use suppressants that control their cycles?

But the length of time between heats depends on which kind of suppressant she uses. Apparently.

And he’s relatively sure that it’s a bad idea to text her with— “Oh, hey, Rey, by the way, when exactly is the date of your next heat? I realize that if we’re dating, you might expect me to see you through it, like two normal healthy adults, and it sounds… it sounds... good—incredible, overwhelming, even... but for reasons I can’t go into, I need at least a month's notice to prepare for that idea, so please give me the details of your most intimate bodily functions.”

That’s assuming she would either want or need him to see her through her heat. They’re practically strangers to each other, he reminds himself. It’s assuming a lot of things, including what her touch to his neck meant.

He wishes he could just ask her. He wishes he could just tell her everything, so she’d know. The more time goes on, the worse he feels, trying to hide the fact that he is a big stupid virgin with a brain like a bag of cats lit on fire. 

The longer this goes on, the higher he’s climbing, and the steep drop down to the bottom is more and more terrifying. He was always going to be hurt by this.

But he just can’t lose her. He wants to be the one to give her everything she wants.

And maybe pretending will get easier over time. He can tackle the small challenges on his own, and sex… well, he’ll have some warning.

He’s already sort of kissed her, maybe. That’s almost first base. And he survived.

He spends time preparing for every anxiety-inducing eventuality he can picture in his mind.

A psychic battle within him wages for hours, weighing with a delicate scale which hypothetical scenario would be more humiliating. Well past midnight, he makes up his mind, and walks a half mile to the store to endure the exquisite humiliation of buying condoms.

It is torture, vibrating with tension under the fluorescent lights in the near-empty store. He wants to die when he learns that stores keep condoms locked up, so he has to get a night cashier’s attention to unlock the condom case. He dies a second death when he has to point out the ones he had researched about for the last hour, specialty ones for Alphas.

The cashier, an older Beta woman, looks completely disinterested as he’s checked out, but Ben still throws a few chocolate bars he has no desire to eat on the counter as well to distract from the fact that he’s only buying condoms. It only makes him look hungry as well as horny.

He speedwalks out of the store.

This humiliation was weighed and measured and it is the least bad option. Ben would rather never come back to this store than to ever be in a position where he can’t help Rey with whatever she might ask or need.

He knows it’s a first date, and it’s crazy to buy condoms. He is not in any way expecting or planning to have sex with her, or thinking that she would want to have sex with him, but his sudden condom-buying trip came down to that simple thought of her near her heat.

Their scents still mingle on the skin of his neck. He can picture it too clearly, somehow: Rey, overheated and in pain, begging for him to help her.

She touched his neck. If she is near her heat, and she wants his help, then he wants to be able to help her, that’s all. 

A real man, an experienced Alpha, would have condoms for her. If it never comes up, no one will ever have to know. If it does, he will be prepared.

But he’s exhausted after his humiliating trip, and so Ben only puts a few condoms in an unused pocket of his wallet, and then flings the rest of them far back under the sink in the bathroom to get them as far away from him as possible. He knows if he doesn’t think about it at all, the intense shame will fade a little faster.

The thought of trying to use one for practice is far too much, and he has done more than enough for one day, after socializing with her at lunch and then the condom trip.

Just the slightest mental image of him perched on the edge of his bed, trying on one of the condoms makes him wince in real pain.

As if he really expects to ever use them. As if he really expects that an Omega would ever ask him to. That Rey would...

He’s an idiot. 

He sleeps fitfully.

On Saturday, he works from home as usual, and he’s grateful for the hours spent on something he’s confident in.

Rey posts on Instagram a photo of her at the farmer’s market with her friends, buying apples (apparently). He’s never met her friends. He wonders if they’re her roommates, and how they met. They seem young to him—carefree in their twenties.

He’s an idiot.

Ben can't sleep the night before their date. He’d taken one of his prescribed sleeping pills for anxiety, but not even that is able to cut through the sick tension in his stomach.

He reads articles about what not to do, guides for older adults re-entering the dating scene. He reads about widowers trying again after their mates died. He reads stories about first times.

He takes one of those shitty _“What kind of Alpha are you??”_ online quizzes, and the answer he gets is different this time.

Every time he ever took it before, it was “Loner Alpha” or “Bachelor Pack Alpha” with a little description of how he is “a lonesome but fearsome predator, beholden to no one.”

Now he’s “The Mated Alpha.”

_(“You are dedicated only to your mate, and you would do anything for them. Lucky them!”)_

“Huh,” Ben says, looking at the stock photo of two wolves lovingly cuddled together.

Hands trembling slightly, he closes the tab on his phone.

Ben studies as much as he can. He tries to take it all in, but so much of the advice he finds is “_don’t overthink it_” or _“it will come naturally, you’re an Alpha, so don’t worry.” _

It’s frustrating. And he’s an idiot.

—

He waits at the gates to the park and braces his heart for her not to come. It will be fine if she can’t make it. He will go to the gym and punch bags before he goes home. 

It would be for the best, really, if she put a stop to this now. It would hurt, but it would be a relief, in a way.

They don’t have to put themselves through this.

But then she arrives, appearing around the corner, looking startlingly pretty in the muted cold light. 

When she smiles at him like that, he feels some worries recede, like cold banished by a warm bath in winter. She looks different, but he can’t put his finger on why.

He wants to hold her hand.

"You know, this isn't that far from Rockefeller Center,” she says by way of greeting.

"That was to throw you off the scent."

"Is it still a secret, what we're doing?" 

He lifts the sled that he is carrying beneath one arm. “Not much of one.”

“So we’re sledding.”

"Yes." He knows he's red. It's not the greatest date idea. "But the hill is across the park.”

He planned it that way because the idea of walking with her is appealing.

Rey doesn't look upset or annoyed like he feared. One of the pointers that he found online said not to have a first date at the movies because you spend the entire time in a dark room, unable to talk. Better to go somewhere where you have to make the entertainment yourselves, and see how well you can play and get along together. 

Ben is not good at playing or getting along. But he wants to try with her.

After thinking about it—and especially after the snow came down like a white blanket the night before, thick and beautiful and new—he had bought a plastic sled.

The advice makes sense, but now he’s wishing he had something to distract her with besides his winning personality. A movie might have done some damage control.

"I didn't know there was sledding in Central Park.”

"It will be crowded," he says. “Or we can go ice skating, if you want. Or just walk."

He has the feeling that she enjoys physical activities. Ben blushes, thinking that. He has the feeling she would leave him in the dust at them. 

She is still wearing the too-thin mittens she wore for Sunday dinner, when he covered her hand on his arm and found it cold. Her mittens are not warm enough for this weather.

His instincts are unhappy with that, and distracted by it. But he came prepared for that as well.

“Take this,” he says, holding out one hand.

Rey’s brow furrows as she reads the little package she takes from him.

“Um. They’re hand warmers. If you shake them, they get warm. They’re for your pockets.” Ben can’t stop explaining, even though a part of him is disdainfully tallying the exact number of useless words he’s saying.

It’s hard to tell if it’s obsessive and sick that he thinks of every eventuality and prepares for each of them, or if it’s thoughtful. He thinks too much about things going wrong.

“Oh, brilliant.” Rey rips into them and examines the packets inside. She shakes them experimentally, and wraps her hand around them. “Oh, they’re not just warm. They’re hot, even.” 

“They have a chemical reaction with the air, or something.” 

Rey smiles up at him. “I’ve never used them before.” 

Her smile touches him somewhere in his chest. It seems genuine, and not just her humoring him.

“They’re good,” he says inanely. “When you’re out all day and can’t come in.”

“You’re really going to keep me warm,” she says, and he could swear there is some kind of double entendre in her voice.

“You didn’t know you’d be outside for our date, so it was only fair.”

Saying the word “date” heats his face, even now. She takes his arm and they start to walk. He is aware of her, and how fast she’s moving, and her arm twined through his.

"How is it that you have time to bring your dad lunch so much?" she asks him.

Ben squints at the naked branches of the trees overhead. "I'm a freelance programmer, so I work from my condo. And I need an excuse to leave, sometimes."

"That must be nice."

"It's a pain. He works kind of far. But it gets me out of the house."

_I'm not very interesting_, he thinks, but doesn’t say. _I work from home. I don’t really have friends. I am a virgin who reproduces ancient manuscripts for fun. Please wake up to the fact that I am nothing and put me out of my misery._

He tries to freeze that train of thought before it can run away from him into darkness.

He'd prepared several questions for her, things he wants to know the most.

“I don’t know your last name.”

“Oh. It’s Johnson. Rey Johnson.”

“No middle name?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

_I need to know the right initials to carve into a tree_, he thinks, only half-kidding. He can picture it, and in his mind he would carve the most elaborate lettering.

“I have a middle name,” he answers instead. “I thought we could tell each other our middle names, but you don’t have one. So that won’t work.”

“I mean, you could just tell me.”

“No, I don’t think so. But I’ll make you a deal—I’ll tell you my middle name if you tell me my fortune.”

“I could just ask Han.” 

“That’s cheating.”

“I bet I could find out your middle name with the internet in five minutes.”

“That’s also cheating.”

Rey smiles. “You could never figure out your fortune. You‘re really at my mercy with that.” 

As they talk, they walk through the park, and at first, it seems surprisingly okay. The air is clear, and it’s crowded with pedestrians, but no more than usual. And he isn’t as nervous as usual, talking to her. 

But then her boots slip on the ice that is hidden under last night's newly fallen snow, and she takes in a great gulp of air, gripping his arm and sending his heart spinning. 

And then it happens again. After the third time she nearly bites it, he's gritting his teeth, and she’s clinging to him for purchase.

Rey is red, her hair a little tousled around her face. "These aren't my normal winter boots."

"They're not?" 

He looks at her boots and they do look very new. They have a heel on them, which he doesn’t think he’s seen her wear before.

He’s usually seen her at work, wearing the practical uniform polo shirt of the shop along with tennis shoes, with her hair tied out of her face. She looks dressed up now, her hair down around her face, slightly curled. 

She wasn’t dressed like this on her outing with her friends yesterday in the pictures he saw on instagram.

Did she put on these boots for their date? Are the clothes she's wearing special, too? Did she preen herself for him, thinking of him?

Heat flashes through him. He bites his tongue to keep from praising her nonsensically. _You're beautiful, Omega. You take good care of yourself_.

"They don’t have the best tread," he says mildly instead.

"They don’t," she agrees, sounding a little out of breath from the fright of slipping. "They were a mistake, but I can hold onto you. You’re so steady, I feel like if I ran at you and jumped in your arms, you'd just catch me without moving at all."

The mental image is powerful. He would like to try carrying her in his arms, very much.

"Sounds like an incredibly safe maneuver on ice," he says sardonically instead, and then bites his tongue.

What is wrong with him? She wore cute boots just for him, and he can’t help but be a sarcastic little shit.

"Hmm, you're right,” she says. “We'll have to do it indoors."

“Indoors?"

"Yes," she says, holding onto his arm and staring at the cement. "At my apartment or yours, whichever works. I want you to try carrying me around."

“Y-yeah,” he says, and he thinks he keeps his voice relatively steady. “Sure thing.”

She wants to go back to his apartment? She wants him to go to hers? He had just gotten comfortable, and now his hands are going numb. He thinks about the condoms in his pocket with no small amount of fear.

He pictures carrying her to his couch, setting her down on it. He imagines kissing her, really, this time, and failing at it. 

He can’t do this.

But he’s doing it. He likes her so much. Her scent calls him; she’s pressing against his side. She dressed up for him. She cares about what he thinks of her. She needs him to keep from slipping.

But all that and he’s hollow with fear. There’s just something terribly wrong with him. 

They walk on, slipping only a little.

“I’ve always wanted to live in New York City. I still can’t believe I made it.” Her smile is sad. “It’s a funny story, when I was little, I used to think I would find them if I came to New York. That’s where they said they were going. My parents.”

_That story isn’t funny at all_, he thinks.

“Your parents aren’t alive.” 

Immediately, he wishes he could take his stupid, blunt mouth and dunk himself in the nearby pond.

Rey only looks pensive a moment. “They both died. I had no other relatives. Since I was born here, I was taken into the foster system here.”

Ben thinks about how hard she must have worked to keep the accent through all of that. It makes something ache deep inside him. 

“It’s kind of a sad story,” she says. “Sorry to be a wet blanket. Oversharing, as usual.”

“It’s your life,” Ben says. “It’s important.”

“Not on the first date,” she says. “And not back when I first met you, either. I shouldn’t have said that, but you… I feel like I can tell you things, for some reason. I don’t do this normally.”

He wonders if it was the same with how she told him she wants children. That she doesn’t normally talk about it. But she told him.

“I’ve wasted the last ten years of my life,” he says, trying to match her honesty. His throat closing up.

“You did?”

“I fell out with my family and worked for an evil man. For ten years, that was my whole life. I’ve only stopped in the past couple years.”

“But you stopped,” Rey said, picking up that last sentence as if it’s the most important part.

“Yes, but it doesn’t change that I wasted a decade. You won’t do that.”

“You’d be surprised,” Rey says, eyes sad but mouth smirking. An old hurt. “I waited for my parents to come home years after I was told they’d died. And, well, I’m not doing much with my twenties.”

“You moved to a city that you have always wanted to live in. You’re loved by everyone who’s ever met you. You have friends.”

Rey stares at him for a second and then smiles widely, like the sun breaking through the clouds. “That’s true.”

In a move that he congratulates himself on for a full ten minutes afterward, he reaches down and clasps her hand in his.

And he’s holding hands with her. A woman. An Omega. She squeezes his hand.

He’s intensely aware of every point where they’re touching, even through thick winter clothes.

The people walking in the park would probably only have to glance at the two of them together to see they are an embarrassingly mismatched couple. Mismatched in attractiveness, experience, worthiness—in everything. 

Ben clenches his molars together.

As they walk, they get attention that he isn’t used to on his own, and it’s not because of her sliding. And it’s not actually because of how mismatched they are, he slowly realizes.

A stranger dog-whistles. For a horrifying few seconds, Ben knows the whistling is directed at him, making fun of him for daring to hold her hand.

Ben turns to snarl at whoever it is, but in the crowd it’s impossible to tell. And then he realizes what it is.

It isn’t their hand-holding. It’s Rey’s scent. It’s very… free. He’s not sure how else to describe it.

Is she near her heat? He’d never been around an Omega enough to track their heat. 

Whatever it is, it’s catching the attention of strangers. Most just glance her way, but more than a few have stopped to stare. Ben is glad his arm is around her, glad for his size, glad for his resting bitch face that gives people pause.

Ben wonders why her scent is so obvious compared to other Omegas. And how safe that is for her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the date. Rey has a suggestion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the only upside of anxiety is that you get so used to constantly dealing with the fight-or-flight response that it can make you surprisingly good when it comes to genuinely threatening situations.

Rey’s hands are warm in her pockets. She likes to wear the mittens that Finn knitted for her—they make her feel special and loved. But they are a little chilly, and it’s more sentimental than practical as the days get shorter. 

Her boots are a nightmare. She’s slipping all over and clinging to Ben, and the more she touches him, the more she wants to just yank him to her and really get that kiss.

That kiss that he nearly gave her, so light, breathing against her mouth—

He’s such a tease. He knows how much she wants him, and he chooses to be that tall and hold himself deliberately out of her reach.

She would have stolen a kiss before this. She wanted to kiss him that night they met. And more than that, if he’d been up for it.

The sledding hill is truly crowded with people. And Rey is delighted that his sled is just a big circle of plastic, barely big enough for the two of them. They’ll have to sit close.

Ben Solo seems stuck for a second, and then he sits down on the sled, spreading his legs to make room for her between and holding his hand up to her.

“Right where you want me,” Rey says lightly, taking his hand and sitting in front of him as gracefully as she can. 

“I—“ he says.

He’s so cute.

She turns to smile at him. “Make sure I don’t fall out.”

A second’s pause, and then he wraps his arms around her—not just resting on her hips, but his whole body really hugging her. She wants to feel him.

“You won’t fall out,” he says, low in her ear.

If only she could feel his chest and thighs without their coats. She can’t wait to see what he looks like. Alone, without this crowd around them.

There’s another moment where he just holds her and seems to forget what they’re doing. Then he kicks off and they go, wind whipping around them, the feeling of having no control exhilarating.

The danger is stopping with so many people around. The foot of the hill is just as crowded as the top. 

Rey can hear Ben’s curse as they nearly careen into a group of men. As one, strangely synchronized, they both dig their boots into the snow to stop with a jerk. And all the time Ben holds onto her, arms steadying her.

“Watch where you’re going.”

The voice is precise and pompous.

Alpha. She knows at once, because the stranger is issuing a Command to her. It freezes her in her tracks for an instant, and for a second, she’s transported back to Pennsylvania, ice washing all through her.

No. It’s not him. The voice isn’t the same. It’s not the same as—

But the feeling of being Commanded is the same.

Ben‘s voice is angry, and it’s right next to her ear, sending goosebumps down her neck. “Why the fuck are you standing in the way on purpose?”

“Maybe we should all calm down—” says one of the man’s friends, a Beta.

Ben’s arm is so tight around her she’s finding it hard to breathe. It’s digging into her. Rey’s face twists into a mask of rage.

There’s only one Alpha in their group, thankfully. He’s an insufferable-looking redhead with an expensive fluffy parka on. But he looks Ben up and down and gets a look on his face like he’s unimpressed.

And then the Alpha’s eyes flick to her. And his eyes are a cold blue, just like—

“Omega,” the Alpha says. Then his eyes widen. “Oh, you’re close, aren’t you?”

“Don’t fucking talk to her,” Ben snaps, and she feels colder as his warm hold on her loosens and he gets to his feet, standing between her and the other Alpha.

The Alpha raises an eyebrow at Ben, then speaks once more to Rey. “You can do better than this pussy, Omega. I’ll take you from here. Come with me.”

The last is another Command.

There’s an automatic sensation in the soles of Rey’s feet and in the tendons of her calves, as if they want to obey him. As if obeying would be nice. But Rey doesn’t move a muscle, and bile comes up in her throat.

She draws the knife from her belt, beyond speech.

She’ll kill him.

“I’ll kill you,” Ben promises him.

Oh, wow.

And then Ben punches the other Alpha right in the neck, and as the man falls back in shock, Ben lands a square punch at his face as well, and another. Solid hits that sound like punching wet fruit, following the man down to punch him on the ground, too.

She has never seen Ben look angry like this. He is usually intense, but under a calm surface. Now that’s shattered like ice, revealing roiling rapids beneath.

The Alpha’s friends, yelling, grab Ben’s arms, and they only just manage to pull him away. The Alpha coughs, red in the face and still clutching his neck. There is a laceration across his bleeding nose, and he’s trying and failing to stem the flow, looking murderous.

The Alpha’s friends know he is in the wrong, at least. There are laws forbidding the Commanding of Omegas, though Rey is under no illusions about how rarely that is seriously prosecuted. No, it’s simply because Ben is an Alpha that this would be taken seriously. No court would question an Alpha defending an Omega on a date.

The stranger Alpha seems to realize that, and he spits at Rey, “You’re ripe and you think you can just walk around? You just want some fucking attention!”

There are a hundred Alphas in the park, and he is the only one choosing to be an asshole.

Rey’s hand steadies around her knife. “Just try it,” she goads.

“Let go of me!” Ben shouts, a Command to the men holding him. Obediently, they release him and stand back, looking bewildered.

“You really thought you’d talk to her again,” Ben growls at the other Alpha, stepping toward him. The Alpha stumbles backwards, scrambling to his feet, anger turned to terror.

The Alpha judges the indignity of being beaten to death in a crowded park to be worse than than the indignity of running away, so his retreat turns to a full escape, along with the other men.

“Fuck off!” Ben bellows after them.

Rey takes a deep breath.

Ben half-embraces her, cradling her elbows in his hands. “He won’t touch you,” he says, sounding strange, intense—

“No, he won’t,” Rey agrees.

She picks up the sled and takes Ben’s hand in hers, walking away with him. Away from the crowd, away from the stares. After a few minutes, Ben’s eyes clear a little, and his grip lets up slightly.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“I’m fine.” It's nearly the truth.

“I’m sorry.” He removes the glove on his right hand, staring at it. His knuckles are red, but the skin isn’t broken. 

“You’re sorry?”

“I—hitting that guy, I couldn’t stop. That hasn’t happened since…”

“It’s what he deserves. He’ll think twice next time around.”

“Our date,” he says, sounding a little forlorn.

Rey smiles and shakes her head. “Do you want to go do dinner with me?”

Ben blinks at her.

“I don’t want the date to end.”

“You don’t? Even after...?”

If anything, it made her more sure.

“I still need to know your middle name.” She is petting his right hand, removing the glove and kissing one bruised knuckle, and then the next. 

Ben’s eyes are wide on hers. “Rey.”

It was so hot in an old-fashioned kind of way. He didn’t hesitate to fight. It’s a strange incongruity in what she knows of him. At first meeting him, he seemed so arrogant, and then later, shy.

But he’s a fighter, too.

“You know,” Ben says quietly. “It’s family dinner day tonight. On Sundays.”

“Oh, I need to tell them I can’t come,” she says. “They think I’m coming this week.”

Ben’s hand squeezes hers for a moment, and when she looks up at him, he’s actually smiling. His voice is hushed. “You’d… cancel dinner with them to go to dinner with me?”

“Of course,” she says, not really understanding what he means. Unless, oh, she’s an idiot— “Oh, I see, sorry. Of course, you can’t go to dinner because you already have family plans. I under—”

“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “I’m going to eat dinner with you. Just you.”

“Oh. Good.” She’s actually blushing.

“My middle name is Bail,” Ben tells her.

The sidewalks have been salted or something, and so her feet are steadier on the pavement. He takes her to a bistro and they eat standing up in comfortable silence.

“Rey,” Ben says finally, his voice oddly choked. “Are you near your heat?”

“Yes,” she says.

His reaction is delicious to her. He licks his lips. “Do you…? When?”

“Next week.”

“Ah,” he says, and takes a swig of water. “That’s very soon.”

His scent is very strong, a reaction from the fight he had with the other Alpha. It’s as if his scent is puffing itself up to fight again, to make him smell even bigger and more dangerous than he is. Potent and capable. It’s comforting on a deep level.

“It is soon,” she says simply. She wants him to ask her. 

But he seems overwhelmed for some reason, staring into the middle distance.

“How do you feel about my heat being next week?”

His eyes flash to hers, his hands clenching possessively at his sides. 

Deliberately, she steps closer to him.

His mouth opens, but he swallows whatever he wanted to say by pressing his lips together.

Rey simply puts one hand on his neck, and just like that, he steadies.

“I... I really like you, Rey,” he finally says. For some reason, he almost sounds sad. Like saying those words hurt him. “If you need—if you need help. With anything. Your scent is…”

She flushes when he brings that up again—a taboo subject only acceptable between lovers. And she knows how she smells. A smell only her missing parents could love. No matter how she scrubs, she can’t escape asphalt and oil.

He smells perfect.

Rey watches him remove his gloves, putting them in his pocket. As if possessed by something, he reaches out to take her hand. Tugging Finn’s mitten off, he slowly brings her hand to his face, looking at her.

When she doesn’t stop him, when she wants nothing less than for this to stop, he buries his nose in the gland at her wrist and—he moans. He breathes her in and moans. 

“You smell so good I can hardly think,” he murmurs. “You always have. Do you not use blockers? Are you on suppressants?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t work a service job, so she doesn’t need to, though not using blockers is a little like leaving the house without a bra.

It’s rare for an Omega to not be on suppressants at all, if only for safety reasons. But she can take care of herself.

And there’s a reason she doesn’t, one that is more important than her safety, and one that she doesn’t often examine—she needs to be discoverable.

She used to think that her family would be able to recognize her by her scent. But now that trauma has transferred to Alphas in general. If her great Alpha mate hunts her like in the children’s stories, she wants the Alpha to be able to find her and know her. 

To be overlooked, to be left behind, is her greatest fear. 

Rey wants to be wanted.

Rey likes his nose on her wrist, and she is very ready. So very wet for him, so prepared, just from his protectiveness, his gentleness.

“Do you want to go home with me tonight, Ben?” she asks him. Her voice sounds husky even to her own ears.

It is satisfying how he goes completely white. He clutches her hand between his. “What did you say?”

It’s the fact that she can tell his instincts are just as stirred up as hers that gives her the confidence to ask. She already knows; she can smell how much he wants her. 

“I asked you if you wanted to fuck me. Alpha.”

“I—” He gapes at her. 

She can’t help it; she’s going to go crazy. She knows he likes her. He listened to her, before, even when she was angry with him. He is here with her, rather than with his own parents who love him. His scent is unfurling and wild.

She pulls his wrist to her face, pressing her lips to his gland there. Kissing it once. Twice. 

He touches her hair, cupping her face tentatively. “You want that?” he finally asks, stunned. Breathless.

Smiling, she licks his wrist in one kittenish swipe, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. 

“Don’t I smell like I do?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he chokes, lost.

“Come here.”

Pulling him toward her, she buries his face in her neck. Tentatively—and so slowly, so softly she is trembling by the time she really feels it—he nuzzles the gland there.

“You do,” he declares finally, after long moments of torture. In his voice is the certainty of instinct. “You’re ready.”

And then she gasps loudly because he licks her there, blatantly on her neck gland, and an electric shock of a reaction goes through her whole body. 

Alphas want one thing from her. It never works out, but at least she feels wanted while it’s happening. It’s the one good part of being Omega.

She loves being able to work him up, this handsome near-stranger, this loved precious son who never wanted for anything in his life. She likes being able to smell his want breaking through his blockers.

Ben Solo has everything—a loving family, the security of being Alpha. And if he, this man with everything, this man who wants for nothing—if he wants her, even if it’s just instinct, then—

Then that gives her a place. She wants to be the only thing he wants for, this man who wants for nothing.

She’ll know how he feels, at least. The big, shy son of her boss. And who knows, maybe this time—

He seems sweet and earnest, when he’s not bluntly saying the wrong things. He pays attention to her, makes sure she’s warm. He listens to her. He brings her food, and comforts her. He fought for her.

—maybe it’s him. It could be him.

She tugs his hand in hers. His hand flexes before he holds her back like a lifeline.

When she kisses him, he tastes like ginger.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and for your comments to this story, they have helped me so much and I read them over and over to help me write. I’ve honestly been very overcome.

Rey pulls Ben gently down by the lapel of his coat and—kisses him. Just there, on the mouth.

And Ben knows, he knows from reading about it, what not to do. He knows not to stick his tongue down her throat.

He once saw a video of two proud kissing virgins who kissed for the first time at their wedding ceremony.

They obviously had no idea what they were doing—even Ben could gather that. Because they just went to town, fish-mouthed, delving as if for treasure down their new spouse's throat, filmed for all posterity and in front of a live audience of all their family and friends. 

Flooded with secondhand embarrassment, he’d had to turn the video off. 

That's him. That will be him if he ever tries to kiss anyone. They'll know for sure.

_ Not if you just keep your tongue to yourself, you idiot. _

So Ben keeps his tongue to himself, his mouth frozen under hers. Rey gives him a kiss against his closed mouth. A pause, and then another sweet little seductive press.

For every one of them, a rush goes straight through him, right to his stupid heart. She is going to kill him. Death by a thousand sweet little kisses.

She wants to have sex with him. He wants— she smells like—

Her hand curls around his ear, her thumb touching his cheek. He can see the snowflakes caught in her hair. Her eyes are closed and she is smiling between each little kiss she gives him.

Tiny details, frozen in that moment.

Ben chokes out a relieved laugh against her mouth. He keeps his mouth shut and lets her kiss him. And for those seconds, it is bliss, and he is calm. Happy, even.

After a moment, she pulls back to peer at him, her brow furrowed. His heart drops.

"I—" he says. His kingdom for a single brain cell of power. 

"Ben, should I not have done that?"

He purses his lips together, yellow embarrassment turning his stomach. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “I liked it.”

Rey frowns and touches his cheek with one hand. “Are you alright?”

He squeezes his eyes shut, mortified. “Yes.”

“Can I kiss you again?”

“I—” He wants to kiss her again, more than anything. But— “I’m not that good at it.”

“You’re not good at it?” she repeats. 

Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it readily apparent?

If he could wipe her memory of this, he would do it in a heartbeat. If he could be left in peace with just the memory of her lips touching his, he would give all the money he has.

He can still taste her on his tongue. She surrounds him. 

“Ah—it’s more that I just—I’m not used to kissing. So I don’t.”

She’s just frowning, looking confused. “What do you mean?”

The words just come out of him. “I don’t kiss people. I prefer to just fuck.”

Rey’s eyes widen. “Oh.” And then she steps back from him, hands tracing down his arms before falling away. “Then should we just head to my flat?”

“Yes,” he hears himself say.

He loved her kissing him. And now she won’t ever kiss him again, probably. Was that the first and last time he’ll ever be kissed?

And to go from the first moment being kissed to the first time having sex, one right into the other—

It’s fast. Breakneck pace. He has no time to wrap his head around it happening. But a self-assured, sex-god Alpha would never hesitate, so he can’t either.

Ben opens his mouth to say something, to walk back the no-kiss thing, to beg for her to be gentle with him, to say why he needs time when any normal person wouldn’t, to try to find words to explain, somehow—

But if he did, he might as well just say farewell to her now.

_ “No one here wants to deal with that. They just want to get laid.” _

He can do this. He has to do this for her. He has to take care of her. His Omega needs him. If he could just shut his stupid mind up and let his instincts run things, he might just survive. 

He feels cold. Hand shaking slightly, he unwraps another ginger candy and, as discreetly as he can, pops it in his mouth. The ginger candy doesn’t help. Neither does pinching his leg so hard that he breaks skin with his nails even through the fabric.

Leading him by the hand and never letting go of him, she takes him down the subway stairs and they board the train. She’s steady on her feet now, never slipping once. She sits next to him.

He takes out his phone to text his mom.

**Ben:**I’m sorry, Mom, I can’t make it today. I have a lot of work to catch up on.   
  
**Mom:** That’s fine, Ben. I actually have the flu.

One minute later, he gets a separate text from his dad.

**Dad:** Good luck kid. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Remember to use protection.

Ben hurriedly puts his phone face-down so Rey has no chance to see that message. What the absolute fuck.

“Wait, did you just text my dad that you weren’t coming to dinner?” Ben asks her.

Rey up from her phone. “Yes? Why?”

“We probably shouldn’t have done that at the same exact time.”

“Why do you say that?”

Fuck. His dad must have found out from Rey somehow that they had a date.

Ben taps the letters so furiously with his thumb it makes audible sounds.

**Ben: **What?  
  
**Dad: **Proud of you, kid.  
  
**Ben: **???????

Great, his dad somehow knows. Embarrassing. Now he’ll be smug and waiting for updates. Now someone else knows he thinks he deserves this. Why couldn’t he just be allowed to figure it out on his own—

Rey slides her thigh over his lap and tucks her face to his neck, curling into his arms. She kisses his gland, and pets the gland on the other side of his neck, and even as his heart pounds, he almost immediately feels a strange relief, like a release of pressure. He doesn’t know what to do with his arms, but her mouth on his neck is bliss.

_Hormones_, he thinks fuzzily. Something about the neck gland and soothing your mate. 

His mate. Fuck. They’re going to have sex.

Her thigh shifts over him and now it’s pressing against his erection, which has been half-hard for a while, but which rapidly fills to be harder than he’s ever been in his life, and she can probably feel it. She probably knows that he’s hard.

No one has ever known before, or seen his dick before. With a rush of half-shame, half-defiance, he wants to grind against her, to show her what she’s doing to him. 

Instead, hesitating like he did when she sat on the sled in front of him, his arms slowly curl around her and he just holds her. It feels right. They fit together. He has never felt closer to another person.

He tucks his own face into her neck, where she smells somehow better than she ever has before. Tucked close to her, he can tell some of her emotions from her scent as well—comforted, yet tense. Heated, awake and very aware, and waiting. Her soft heat smells like a heavy-lidded glance.

Take your Omega somewhere safe. His instincts have been screaming ever since the fight. The train is too exposed. He has the urge to find a dark corner and keep her there forever.

When he flexes his right hand behind her back, his knuckles sting. He didn’t even try to stop himself from nearly beating that man to death. He would have killed him. He felt the same as he did in his first rut, standing over that man he’d attacked for no reason, righteous fury ruling him.

Alphas are dangerous. His violence was why his mom and dad separated when he was a teen, and why they’d sent him away. 

It’s as if he isn’t on suppressants at all. It feels like he’s going into rut, losing control of himself.

A shudder goes through his entire body.

—

Rey leans into him and speaks in his ear, sensuously rubbing her wrist gland into his neck. “I was tested recently. I’m clean, with a doctor’s note,” she says, very clearly. “And I have an IUD.”

He looks at her as if she’s speaking a language he isn’t familiar with. She bites her lip—it’s cute, how distracted he is when she’s rubbing his glands. “I’m on birth control,” she rephrases. 

“Oh,” he says, eyes wide.

“Are you clean?”

He blinks, and then he nods. 

“Good.” She whispers in his ear. “I’d like you to come inside me, Alpha.”

Ben’s hand twitches in hers. “Holy shit,” he says under his breath.

“I’d like it,” she says simply, smiling. “I want to really feel you.”

“You don’t want a condom?” He sounds breathless.

“We don’t need one. Unless that’s what you want.”

He finds her own ear with a promise. “We’ll do whatever you want,” he says, deep voice shaking a little. “Omega.”

The words are warm water cascading over her. Then Ben goes silent.

Rey wishes she could kiss him. It’s strange that he doesn’t kiss. How did that happen? What a shame, a man born with lips like that. 

She realizes she is staring at his forbidden mouth only when he clears his throat. 

Rey whisper is as soft as she can make it. “I shouldn’t have been so worked up by it, but I’ve been dripping slick ever since you took care of that bully.”

“You have?” He looks stunned. “You are?”

“Yes. That’s why I smell so good for you, Alpha.”

“Fuck, Rey.” Ben clutches her waist, pressing her thigh harder onto his cock. 

He just presses her into him and just holds her there, steady and shifting only a little, nearly panting into her neck. 

  
  
  
  


The early winter dark has fallen by the time they reach her flat, where they have to climb stairs until they’re both out of breath when they to get to her floor.

Rose will be out late tonight, so the flat is dark and empty when they step in. She and Rose have secondhand furniture—secondhand everything—and she hopes to distract him from examining it all too closely. 

Ben looks stuck, standing there in the muted near-dark. 

“Ben,” she says, and she can’t wait another second. 

She pulls his head down for another kiss. Soft lips, she thinks. He’s towering over her. Big man, all for her.

His lips are soft but his mouth is tense again, pursed under hers as if he’s bracing for an attack. He’s so tentative and close-mouthed, he’s obviously teasing her. 

And then she remembers, pulling back. He’s very flushed, she can tell even in the dark of the room. His smile is shy.

“Sorry, I forgot,” she whispers. “No kissing. Should I bite you instead, then?”

“Like a—?” He strangles the rest of the question before it can escape him, but Rey wonders what he was about to say. _A mating bite_.

He continues. “You can—you can do whatever you want. With me. I’m… I’m yours.”

Her hormones are drowning her, and if he doesn’t touch her, she will die. “Ben, please.”

“I’ve thought about this,” he tells her, voice hushed. 

“You have?”

“I had dreams about this.”

Dreams?

She had at first feeling him across the parking lot marked him as the “shut up and bite the pillow, this isn’t about you” kind of Alpha, a hunter who’d use her thoroughly and spit her out again and she’d thank him for it. And he did seem self-centered like that when she first met him. And that idea had its own appeal, honestly.

But this… this is romantic. It’s not casual sex on the first date material. It’s a strange contrast to what he said earlier about only wanting to fuck.

When she expects him to elaborate with some good dirty talk, he just stops talking. He just goes silent again, biting his lip.

“What did you dream, Ben?” she goads.

“I dreamed—” He cuts himself off. “I was inside you.”

Rey shivers, even if his words are tame. Just to hear him speak like that is enough for her clenching, hormonal body. “I want you to be.”

Ben makes a noise in his throat, clutching her upper arms. “We need to be naked,” he says, almost confused. “And we need a bed. Right?”

“That’s normally a requirement,” she jokes.

Ben looks nonplussed, and shrinks from her a little. “I guess.”

Rey touches his neck and he stills. 

“I have a couch…?”

“No,” he says, pressing his lips together. “I deserve a bed. And I want to see you.”

He intertwines their hands this time and leads her to her room, following the scent. As he closes the door, she hopes he doesn’t care how her bed is unmade and small, or how the only real mark of herself in the room is the small cactus on her bedside table. She’d been proud of it for putting out a small bud that will bloom soon.

—

She teases him by removing her clothes slowly, while he stands watching, completely still, and not really breathing. His focus makes her breath come faster until she’s naked and panting and tugging off his clothes as well.

A beautiful, naked woman is undressing him, and they are about to have sex.

Her room is strange to him. It smells good though, unfamiliar but delicious. Like her, like the deepest and most secret part of her, kept in this space where she sleeps.

He lets her do as she wants to his clothes, helping her only after she starts to remove a new item, not wanting to presume. His coat and shirt, his undershirt are removed until his torso is bare to her. 

Ben can’t hide his intake of breath when she spreads her hands across his chest.

And then his breath catches as she unbuttons his pants and he feels how close her hand is to him when she unzips him. 

With his clothes removed, he feels that his skin has been flayed off as well, and a cold breeze of fear is licking his exposed muscles, all the hidden parts. He is hard, pointing at her and she can see everything there is to him.

“What do you like?” she murmurs, smiling up at him. 

He’d been thinking of that, but his mind is empty now, everything flown out of his head. 

_Teach me to kiss you_, he thinks. _Lie down with me and hold me. Let me make it feel good enough to you so you’ll let me stay. Bite me and tell me you want to keep me with you from now on. Don’t let this end._

“Everything,” he says instead. “Anything. I want to do what you want to do.”

Rey bites her lip, smiling. “I want this.” And with a bravery and trust that floors him, she climbs on the bed and assumes lordosis, her tear raised in the air and her head and arms buried in the bedding. He can see her sex, and how incredibly slick she is.

He stares down at her body, absurdly beautiful, the graceful lines of her. His mate is the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth. It’s like his fantasy the first time he saw her working on the truck, except real and offered to him.

He can’t see her face, the way it’s pressed to her pillow. She feels far away from him. 

His heart hitches in his chest because he knows this isn’t something he deserves. Not just sex, but the feeling of another person touching his skin. Having a beautiful woman smile at him, naked for him. It’s not for him. He doesn’t get to have this.

She’s trembling a little—he doesn’t know whether it’s nerves or anticipation. Caught by the thought that she might feel scared, too, that this night could potentially hurt her, too, and not just him, he spreads his hand across her spine, spanning her back. Her trembling stops at his touch. Just like that.

He doesn’t want her scared or hurt, like him.

He wants so much to taste her, to try to make her come with his mouth, to hear her make little noises for him. But like kissing, it would be obvious he’d never done it before, so he tears himself away from the idea. Maybe he could try later, after researching more.

”Beautiful,” he murmurs. “Look at you.”

He slides his hand down and touches her lower lips. A light stroke. 

Rey gasps, arching.

Taking his cock in his hand, he presses into her, just a little bit, completely bare and touching her. The feeling of the head of his cock parting her wet tight heat, and it’s already the best thing he’s ever felt in his life.

“Rey,” he breathes.

The pure wet pressure, the yielding of her flesh around him, her heat. His hips want to flex, to thrust fully into her, to fill her up like he’s wanted to since he first laid eyes on her.

He can’t control it. He thrusts into her as far as he can, bottoming out.

It is the beginning of the end.

Rey tenses and cries out in pain.

Ben freezes, breaking out into a cold sweat. “Rey?”

“You’re big,” she says, wincing. “Hurts. It’s—”

“What?” Ice fills him. He can’t understand. 

He’s inside her, where he belongs. But he’s hurting her. She’s in pain.

_ “A big boy like you is gonna lose control his first time...“ _

He can’t—

Her face. She’s in pain. He’s _ hurting his mate _because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing—

_ “...rut some poor thing to death.” _

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say.

He rips himself from her, chin trembling. 

They were right. He can’t ever have sex. He’s dangerous, a failure. No one can bear all of him, and no one should have to deal with him.

She’s saying something, but he can’t hear over the white noise in his ears.

“Thank you for today,” he says, strangely calm. He is tucked far away from himself. “It was w-wonderful and I’ll never forget it. But it—it was a mistake, I think.”

“A mistake?” Rey is confused, and hurt. She curls into herself, looking at him behind her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and steps back, avoiding her eyes.

“Alpha?” She sits up and covers her breasts with her hands.

He closes his eyes against her voice, against his instinctive reaction to the proof of how he’s hurt her. He can dimly feel his eyes start to stream, the stinging in his chest. There’s not enough air. He buttons his pants over his erection, his cock still wet with her slick. 

“What’s wrong?”

He can’t look at her; he can’t look at her eyes, large and luminous, full of disappointment. He shakes his head, pressing his lips together, begging silently for control. 

“Ben, please don’t go.”

“Omega, _stay_.”

It’s a real Command.

Rey pauses in the doorway, so full of hormones that she hesitates to disobey. Then her face fills with betrayal, and a sound escapes her, a small cry. 

But it gives him time to grab his coat, shove his boots on, fling her door open and then closed again behind him.

His Omega obeys him, and does not follow.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ben, what are you doing?” —the author, in tones of rising horror while writing this chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back when I was happily writing the most angsty part of this moody fic just a few days before TROS came out, it was only because I trusted TROS to have a happy ending that contrasted it. To put it lightly, I’ve been devastated.
> 
> I’m sorry that I left Ben and Rey in the lurch, but every time I tried to write from Ben’s POV in this chapter after seeing that movie, I would just cry. The AU version of him in this fic is a very personal character to me and some of his thought processes cut too close after that movie. But I’m determined that at least this will have a happy ending. Thank you for being patient.

He doesn’t remember how he gets home.

His condo is the same—the neat clean lines, the lack of color, the emptiness.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, but the sound doesn’t register.

It is late at night, and dark. There is the faint hum of the electronics in his kitchen, and a car passing on the street far away. There is his own breathing, and the sound of his keys faintly clicking together as he hangs them on the key rack. 

This pain is worse than if he’d never tried at all.

It’s too big to think about.

The wound is such a mortal wound, he immediately walled it away from himself, like a quarantine.

He stands near the enormous dam of it in his mind now, an incomprehensible amount of pain looming over his head, waiting.

If his mind is blank, it doesn’t hurt. If his mind catches on the wrong things, the dam cracks.

The snowflakes caught in her hair as she kissed him for the first time. 

Crack.

The way she pressed her face to his neck, the way his arms felt around her.

Crack.

Her nakedness—seeing and being seen. Her bravery and her beauty.

Crack.

The sound she made when he hurt her. He’ll never see her again. 

The worst crack of all, a piercing pain catching in his chest.

A sound escapes him, a groan through his teeth. A few breaths later, the moan turns into a scream of agony, a bellow as loud as he can scream, clutching at his hair.

_It’s over_, he thinks. _Enough. It was always impossible for you._

He slowly unclenches from the rictus, exhausted. The dam still feels full to the brim.

_Enough. You’ll have another thirty years to regret her._

His rut is triggered by... by what happened. He’d felt it coming in fast since he fought the other Alpha, and it’s in full swing now, even though he’s on a high dose of suppressants.

Because—

—a flash of pain so acute he can’t breathe for a few seconds—

—because of her. He’s in rut because of what happened with her.

Ben chest burns as he examines the handcuffs that hang from his metal bed frame. As he shackles his wrist, a sound hitches in his throat.

If he doesn’t leash himself in some way during his ruts, he would find himself wandering the streets, hunting for something he could never find. Though the cuffs are more of a reminder for him not to unconsciously get up and leave his condo. He never had to hide the keys from himself before. 

This time it’s different. He knows on a level beyond instinct that his hunting in rut will never be aimless again. He knows what he has been hunting for since he was a teenager but had never found.

He knows where his body would run at once if he let it. He knows he would hunt without pause until he was back at her apartment, until he found her.

_You must go to your Omega’s nest. Go at once. She is there, and she is ready. She is yours._

But as he instinctively moves, responding to the thought like a moth to light, his bound hand stops him short, metal clinging against metal. He blinks at it.

_If you don’t go at once, another Alpha will find her, and she will choose them as a mate instead of you._

The keening, pained, angry sound escapes him again. “No.”

He’s clawing himself up inside, a confused itch in his feet screaming at him to find her at once. Find her and—

_Hurt her?_ he thinks scathingly. _Hurt her again? _

He can’t go back there. If he hurt her while he was lucid, what would he do in a rut?

Rut some poor thing to death.

He knows where she lives.

The key to the handcuffs is in the dresser. Ben retrieves it and flings it as far as he can down the long hallway, where it makes a small sound wherever it lands on the kitchen tile.

He knows where she lives, but now it doesn’t matter. The keys are gone. He can’t get out. She’s safe.

His phone vibrates again, and this time it cuts through to Ben. With trembling hands, he finds it in his coat pocket, and just holds it in his hand without looking.

A message from her is on the notification screen, he can see out of the corner of his eye. He closes his eyes and braces himself for her anger, her disgust, her—

**Rey: **come back

Oh. Oh, she—

He wants to go back. His Omega, left all alone. What was he thinking?

Protect her. He has to—

He scans up to read the happy exchange they shared that morning before their date. Before he flew too close to the sun. They were happy, before. He closes his eyes and breathes for a second.

He knows he’ll never see her again, and so texting hurts. It feels like the last time he’ll ever see her, except he won’t even get that. The embarrassment pain feels like pressing his whole body into a wall of knife blades, but he needs her to know it’s not her fault. That it’s all him.

Ben types the response with his left hand, awkwardly. He’d handcuffed his right hand.

**Ben: **I’m sorry, Rey. It isn’t your fault.

He sees the three dots flash, so he tries to type faster than her.

**Ben: **I went into rut so I had to leave 

It’s nearly full-swing now. His other hand comes up to his neck, feeling his gland, awake and hungry. Rey had scented him so carefully that his mind is spinning with her scent mixed with his. He is still hard from her. 

His body is strangely calm, tricked into thinking she is near, with the scent of her twined with his. It won’t last for long, he thinks. Already, he feels his thoughts slipping. He’s not sure why he’s here, when he could be with her.

No. He can’t risk losing control and calling her during his rut, begging her to come free him. He’ll hurt her again. He doesn’t deserve it.

She types for a long time. Finally:

**Rey: **I don’t understand

_Omega is unhappy,_ some ancient part of him warns.

Of course she is. It’s already ruined, to the point where it will never be the same. The joy of their texts this morning is gone forever. She knows now. He hurt her, and he ruined it and it’s done. 

**Ben: **I didn’t mean to hurt you. At least now you don’t have to deal with this anymore. I’m sorry for the trouble

Rey doesn’t type back to this. He waits for long minutes, completely still. The dots don’t reappear.

She’s on a ship sailing away from him, far out on the water, and he can only barely still see her shape, receding in the distance, toward the point where the gray of the sea joins with the dark clouds on the horizon. Then he can’t even see the shape of her aboard her boat anymore, and even her boat is swallowed by the horizon.

“Goodbye, Rey.” He says it out loud. To taste how it sounds out loud. “I love you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, mouth trembling. Not breathing for a long time.

Then he throws his phone along the same trajectory as the key, and hears it hit the carpet before skidding somewhere in his kitchen out of reach.

There. So it’s done. 

—

_Omega, stay—_

Rey curls in on herself on her bed, blanket around her shoulders. She’s too confused to cry. 

_You’re not good enough. You’ll never be good enough for someone to stay. He took one taste of you, and that was all he needed to run._

_Come back_, she types. Her hands are shaking.

She doesn’t leave her bed, stomach upset by how much she still wants to obey him. Rey can’t believe he used a Command on her. 

_Stay_.

_Why didn’t he stay?_

There was something so strange about him when he left, like he was in distress. Or he felt guilty. His scent was pure fear.

Does he have a secret wife and kids?

Is that why he wouldn’t even kiss her?

No, no. Han said Ben was single. And he smells single. Ben is unmated. Rey has never caught even the slightest scent of another Omega from his clothes. Ben has that strong scent of an Alpha bachelor. And the eyes of a man hunting for a mate.

But not for her. Her Alpha hasn’t come back, and he still hasn’t answered her. He just doesn’t want her. 

It catches too close to old feelings inside her. What her ex-boyfriend said—

—but then she remembers Ben’s intense eyes. He had almost shouted when he told that she would have a family one day. That she’d have everything she needs. That she just needs to be brave and try.

When he said that, Ben looked like he wanted to shake the universe for her. She thought he was talking about his own family. For a dizzying moment, she thought he was saying he wanted to marry her, like one of those stories where a couple gets married on a whim and stays together for fifty happy years.

Those old dreams she had when she first felt him in the shadowed hallway had burst into bloom again.

So much for that.

If he didn’t want to have sex with her, why didn’t he just say? But the worst is that he’s not even answering her. What is so wrong with her? What did she do wrong?

Angrily brushing a tear away, Rey curls in a little more, closing her eyes and cradling her phone in both hands. Rey startles when her phone beeps. 

**Ben: **I’m sorry, Rey. It isn’t your fault.   
  
**Ben: **I went into rut so I had to leave

Rey frowns because it just doesn’t make sense. She knew Ben was just on the verge of rut—the scent of him was driving her crazy. But Alphas going into rut would fight to stay with a willing and naked Omega.

Even if he didn’t like her after all, it would have been in his interest to stay with her.

**Rey: **I don’t understand  
  
**Ben: **I didn’t mean to hurt you. At least now you don’t have to deal with this anymore. I’m sorry for the trouble

Confused tears spring to her eyes. So it’s over, just like that. Rey lets herself cry it out for a while, crushed over this man. She’s known him for a week, but she likes him so much. He feels right to her, and he smells so good. He’s sweet and gentle and listens to her. She wanted to teach him to love kissing. She still has his fortune in her wallet.

After crying, she gets angry again. She stands up from the bed to text.

**Rey: **Say that to my face, Ben Solo.

He doesn’t reply.

—

It takes him a few hours to realize that he is going to die like a dumbass.

He’s thrown away the key to his handcuffs and his phone, too. Like a fucking idiot. So there’s no chance he can get out, and no way to get help. His condo is soundproofed between floors, so no one will hear him if he shouts for help.

So he’s really going to die this stupidly.

_I won’t die a virgin_, the thought comes. _I’m not a virgin anymore, technically, after—_

It feels like a hot brand is searing him away behind his sternum. He feels sick.

Anger rolls through him—anger at himself, anger at the unfairness, at the wasted years and the years yet to come. Rage at his dad for trying to fix him, for hiring Rey at his shop in the first place.

Anger is a relief, but when anger is exchanged by waves of grief that he’s not equipped to let himself feel, he chokes and can hardly breathe.

He stays on the bed, staring at the ceiling, still in his boots. He can’t take his coat off past the handcuffs, so he still has one sleeve on. His very stupid and inevitable, completely avoidable death feels distant.

His glands itch. She isn’t near, but he can still smell her as if she’s near. Her scent will fade soon.

Ben takes double the usual amount of his anxiety sleeping pills from his side table and swallows them dry. The pills burn in his stomach, and his sleep is fitful, but at least he sleeps.

—

It’s hard to drag herself to work on Monday morning. Rey manages to eat her cereal fast enough to get out of the apartment before Rose wakes up and asks her questions. She’ll talk about it, but she grew up holding her secrets close to her chest.

And there’s no way to tell the story that isn’t humiliating. 

The worst thing is that she made the mistake of opening up to him. She’s told him things, and he’d given her all the right answers. Up until the part where he suddenly didn’t.

Rey grits her teeth and centers the oil pan before draining the oil from her first car of the day. Usually the sight of the old oil draining soothes her because it looks like toxic sludge being removed. She tries not to think of anything.

Han comes to examine the tires of her car in a very obvious way, hovering for a couple minutes too long. Finally, he coughs.

“So, how’d it go?” Han asks, shouting over the noise of the other lift.

Rey tries not to change expression, but she knows she can’t hide her hurt and annoyance. “Didn’t you talk to him about it?”

“No. He doesn’t want me teasing him.”

Rey doesn’t know what to say, but catching the oil in the pan gives her an excuse not to look at him.

“So, did you hit it off?” The hope in Han’s voice kills her.

“We did… we did at first, but....”

Han’s face falls. “Oh.”

“He must have changed his mind about me.”

The sludge is down to drips now. Rey replaces the copper gasket on the oil plug, and then ratchets it back in. She unscrews the old oil filter, and the last of the black oil just covers her rubber gloves. 

For a few seconds, the smell of the oil truly covers the remnants of Ben’s scent. And she doesn’t know whether those few seconds are blissful or hellish. Both at the same time, maybe.

Han stares at the tires for a few more unnecessary minutes before saying gruffly, “You know, he was always a shy kid. But I don’t remember him ever changing his mind about anything good he set his heart on.”

“I think he was pretty clear.”

“Huh,” Han says, and just from that, she can tell he doesn’t think it’s likely. ”Sometimes he needs a little push in the right direction.”

For lunch, they both eat food from a fast food place nearby. Ben doesn’t appear with lunch. Not that she expects him to.

—

It will be hunger that kills him, probably.

He has water from his bathroom faucet, so he won’t die of thirst. And he can even use the toilet if he shoves the corner of the bed frame inside the bathroom far enough.

Leaving his room without dismantling his bedframe is impossible—it’s made out of metal welded together and he doesn’t have the special fucking kind of wrench it needs. The bed frame is too huge to fit down the hallway. As a last resort, when his rut goes down, he’s going to try to bend the metal.

He can’t remember how to pick handcuffs open—even though he remembers his dad showing him the trick as a kid, he can’t remember how he did it. Ben doesn’t have his phone to look up how to do it. It drives him crazy because he knows it’s probably not that hard, but he just can’t get it to open. 

It’s hard to think clearly at all, in rut.

It’s so stupid. It’s even more stupid that he doesn’t even regret it. Maybe he will when the hunger hits him, but for now, his rut hurting her scares him more than starvation.

“Fuck.”

His ruts have never been like this before in his entire life, so punishing and intense. He wakes feverish, agonized, enraged and animalistic. Waves of urges wash over him. Uncontrollable, powerful.

His wrist is raw and bruised, nearly bleeding from how he’s pulled it against the handcuffs, wanting to go to her. 

Why the fuck did he throw his phone away? If he had it, he could at least call her and hear her voice. Her beautiful voice.

She’s so good, so good to him.

His heart aches with missing her. He had been so hopeful. The scent of her is still on his neck, and his cock, too. He was inside her. He doesn’t want her scent to leave him. He needs her, needs to find her and—

No. He can’t—

“Rey,” he pants, stroking himself with the wrong hand, his free hand, naked and writhing on his sheets. “Please.”

Alphas don’t beg. He’s a bad Alpha.

“Help me, Rey,” he pleads into his pillow. 

He needs her. Only her.

“Why aren’t I good enough?” His thoughts are fragmented, incoherent. He’s broken, there’s something wrong with him, and because he’s wrong and broken, she isn’t there. He hurt her, and he deserves this.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes.

Anger surges, bright inside him, feeding from the coal of pain. Anger feels best of the horrible array of possible ways to feel. He leans into it.

Usually in rut, he’s just horny and angry, restless. This time, it is orders of magnitude different. In the lucid moments, Ben thinks it’s because of her scent, her slick. It haunts him.

It comes in waves. When it’s worst, he would do anything to just see her, smell her again. He would roll her under him, push in where he belongs, home inside her. And it wouldn’t hurt, because she would take everything he has and more. She’d be able to hold all of him with her little waist and flared hips. She’d love his cock so much. She would beg him to pound into her, to bite her, to stay with him forever.

His mate, his only one. 

But he can’t find relief.

He is in rut, but no matter how he tries, he can’t knot. 

_Not without her. It’s only for her. _

He can only come half-hearted dribbles, as if his instinct knows he is masturbating and is saving his cum only for her. There is no relief, and it quickly becomes painful. 

When it recedes, he leaks tears from his eyes, overwhelmed, as he reads books from the shelf in his room, trying desperately to distract himself_ — _

Ruts don’t last this long. Something is wrong. He is in an endless hell.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the start of the climb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has written such beautiful comments about anxiety and adult loneliness, and I’m sorry if this story has been upsetting or too much or not what you expected—I feel for you and I know how you feel. This story is very personal to me and I needed to write it in this certain way.
> 
> I know that Ben’s anxious pov can be distressing and frustrating, and I’m thankful for the constant love and concern for him.

Hoping he can break the weld on the metal frame, he kicks it as hard as he can. The handcuffs are around one relatively thin bar, and if he can get the bar to break away at just one weld, he’ll live.

All he has to do is bust through metal with his flesh-and-blood body, that’s all.

He feels like he’s going insane.

Naked, half-crazed from rut, and with the sleeve of his t-shirt and his coat still caught on his right hand, all he’s managed to do is bend the headboard slightly and accidentally kick himself in his already-bruised and bloody wrist. He’d put his boots back on so he wouldn’t hurt his feet when kicking the metal, and it didn’t do his wrist any favors.

He screams, curling up in pain.

And the metal isn’t budging. He’d bought a really nice bed with his real, adult money, his heart full of hope. He’d be better off with the mattress on the floor, like how it had been years back, when he never left his old apartment for months at a time. When he worked remotely for Snoke.

He’d slowly allowed his discomfort with being seen trap him inside, until his already bad anxiety about being looked at had fully metamorphosed into agoraphobia.

And here he is, again, trapped.

Ben falls back, panting, another wave of his rut about to overwhelm him. It never ends.

It will be another week, until next Sunday’s dinner, before his parents will know for sure he’s not responding to his phone. But with his history with them, he’s not sure they will even look for him. He dropped all communication with them for years at one point, so they might just think he’d cut them off again. 

His past mistakes will never be forgotten, and he'll pay for them forever.

  
  
  
  


He never carried her, he remembers with a hitch of loss, the color leeching out of him. Rey wanted him to pick her up in his arms, in her place or in his.

He wonders what that would have been like. With her cradled close to him, her arms around his neck. In control of where they both go, with her trust.

He probably would have dropped her, so it’s good they didn’t get that far. But it would have been nice to try, just once.

One of the books on his shelf is a workbook about “emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness”—a book for his anxiety that he bought at the bookstore at a point where his daily pain was more horrendous than the embarrassment of buying an anxiety workbook in person.

He hasn’t read it in years. But now, dying slowly in his self-imposed isolation, he has plenty of time. Ben does the anxiety homework in the book.

As he writes, he writes very carefully with a pen he found in his desk drawer, and with his bruised, bloodied right hand still close to the headboard because he’s still shackled to it. 

**Trigger thoughts are critical thoughts that we may have been told as children by our guardians. They are self-criticisms that only make our lives harder.**

**Checklist of Trigger Thoughts**

  * X “I’m an idiot/jerk/moron
  * __ “I can’t do anything right.”
  * X “I’m a failure.”
  * __ “I’m incompetent.”
  * X “No one’s ever going to love me.”
  * X “I’m unlovable.”
  * X “I’m broken.”
  * X “There’s something wrong with me.”
  * X “No one cares about me.”
  * X “Everyone always leaves me.”
  * X “People always hurt me.”
  * X “I’m going to be alone forever.”
  * X “I don’t deserve to be loved.”

After checking the ones that he uses, nearly all of them (and the ones he doesn’t check, it’s on a technicality), Ben leans back in thought.

Okay, so maybe he still has some things to work through. But doesn’t this just prove that he’s not ready for a relationship? He should have worked through this years ago. It’s so wrong to involve another person in this mess. He’s a mess.

Sighing, he reminds himself to use the coping thoughts he picked to use whenever he has these thoughts. He knows if he trains himself to be aware of them and to not to ever use them, then he can cut his level of distress down.

He’s a mess? Well, he can think different thoughts if he wants to. He’s done it before, he’s just out of practice. He’s survived worse than this and he’s made much worse mistakes before, and he’ll survive this too.

Ben takes a deep breath and continues to the page about working through anxiety related to specific situations.

**When did the situation happen?**

_ Three days ago on Sunday night. _

**What happened?**

His pen hesitates. Eventually, he writes— 

_ At the end of my first date, I tried to have sex. I panicked and hurt her and went into rut. _

**Why do you think that situation happened?**

_ I don’t know how to do any of it. I wasn’t ready to have sex, and I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t want it to be over like that. I was greedy and selfish. I thought I could pretend I’m allowed to have sex and be in love for a little while, but I’m not allowed. _

Ben frowns at that last sentence. He knows it’s the same as the last trigger thought on the list. It feels true, but it doesn’t make complete sense when he reads it after writing it down.

He thinks about all the stupid, mean people he’s met who are allowed to have relationships, yet he isn’t. He knows “you are not allowed to have sex and be in love” is something he would never say to someone else. 

But it still feels true when it comes to him. He can’t explain it. But it’s true.

Other people get to love and be loved. Like Rey—Rey is loved, and Rey loves, because Rey is a being of light who is only good to know, a joy to others. While Ben is a bulk of sharpness and anger and terror that can only ever hurt other people. He doesn’t deserve it.

He can try to be soft and good, and he can try to fix things, but he only breaks and harms, a constant disappointment to those who must know him throughout his entire life. He is someone to be endured. He will never find his home in another person, and it’s embarrassing for him to try.

There’s something about it that isn’t logical, but he can’t quite see which part. The feeling of painful resignation is so strong and real that it makes thinking about it difficult. He can’t tell whether he’s being mean to himself or just being realistic.

He’s done this exercise before, back when he made the decision to reconnect with his parents—he had to work through many strong misconceptions before he felt like he could brave the discomfort and self-loathing and anger to speak to them again. From that experience, he knows sometimes he needs to think about things from other angles to see what he is getting wrong.

His automatic anxiety thoughts are painful to examine, like trying to climb a steep, muddy cliffside barefoot in the rain. If he stays completely still, not challenging his anxiety, it’s miserable, but at least familiar. There are sharp rocks hidden in the mud that slice his feet, and he’s met with new ribbons of emotional pain if he moves wrong. And moving, he’s so afraid he’ll slip and lose all the progress he’s made and fall all the way to the bottom again.

He knows what’s at the bottom in the pitch darkness, and he can’t go back there.

**How did that situation make you feel, both emotionally and physically?**

**Emotions** —_shock, pain, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, fear, sadness, regret, loneliness, misery, pissed off. I miss her. So much. The worst versions of all of those words._

**Physical sensations** —_pain in chest, panic attack, heart racing, nausea, couldn’t breathe, adrenaline, tired, disassociation, strange rut that won’t end_

**What did you have the urge to do as a result of how you felt?**

_ Isolate, use handcuffs really stupidly, punch bags _

**What did you do and say?**

  * _I went home and used handcuffs for my rut and threw away the key_
  * _I told her goodbye without being able to explain well, so she probably feels embarrassed, though really she’s better off._
  * _I said sorry but it’s not enough of an apology after hurting her when she thought it was just going to feel good. I wish it just felt good, but it’s just painful always, all the time, no matter what I do._

**How did your actions affect you later as a consequence?**

  * _I’m locked in my room and I can’t get out without kicking my bed apart or biting my arm off. _
  * _I might die but I deserve it because it’s like those stories where people die in stupid ways. The Darwin Awards._
  * _I missed two days of freelance work because I’m a stupid fuck who can’t get into my office. _
  * _I hurt her and I won’t get to talk to her or see her or smell her ever again._

“Fuck,” he says, clenching the notebook so tightly the paper wrinkles in his hand.

**What’s the worst that can happen?**

It takes him a long time to write the answer, and he’s trembling by the time he writes the last word.

_ I’ll get out before my rut is over, hunt her and force myself on her or hurt her or kill her. Rut her to death. _

**How likely is that to happen? Be realistic.**

_It already nearly happened_.

Ben frowns. That isn’t quite right—he actually stopped as soon as she cried out. And he didn’t keep hurting her when he could have hurt her. He left and went home.

But his rut is worse now, so he doesn’t know what would happen. Maybe it wouldn’t be like that, but he doesn’t know for sure.

Other Alphas have sex day and night without this being a big concern. But—Ben doesn’t know what he’s doing. Maybe if he learned how to do it, or took precautions, or went more slowly, it might be okay, like when he slowly left his old apartment, step by step.

_ This is a part of the situation that might feel worse than it really is. _

**How would my best friend see this situation?**

His lips press together, twisting.

_ Best friend. Right. When I make a best friend, I’ll be sure to ask them. _

But he knows what the question is really asking:

**How would a normal person without a fucked-up brain see the situation?**

His father’s voice in his head: ‘Don’t be so dramatic, kid.’

A normal person wouldn’t understand why this is so impossible. He wishes he could just calm down. He wishes he could just “chill out” for once in his goddamn life. He wishes he could feel for five minutes how that feels.

The waves of helpless anger this question provokes aren’t helpful. He skips it.

**What are you worried about?**

_I’m worried that if I tell her the truth, that so much is wrong with me, she will act like the others and reject me, or be disgusted or pity me, or laugh, and I’m afraid I’m not strong enough to survive that again, not with her_

**How likely is it that to happen? Give examples of past experiences, or other evidence, to support your answer.**

_ Highly likely. _

  * _girl at camp who wouldn’t kiss me_
  * _woman at bar who was drunk and horrible_
  * _no one has ever liked me before, so it would be a weird time for that to start_
  * _I don’t even know if she likes me_
  * _Rey called me “the worst” when we met_

Her words replayed in his head when he tried to sleep for the past week. He doesn’t want to hear her say it again. It was probably already ruined from the first, when it went so badly at first meeting her.  
****

**If your worry does come true, what’s the worst that could happen?**

_ I’ll die. _

A sharp, real pain lances him at just the thought. It takes him almost a minute to continue. His hand is shaky, and his heartbeat is fast, racing in his chest. He can’t take a full breath.

**Is that thought based on facts or feelings?**

Anger roils through him. He knows it isn’t based on fact—he knows he won’t die. But—

He breathes deeply.

_ I might not die, but I might as well be dead. _

He imagines a pitying expression on her face. She wouldn’t be cruel, but she would never see him like a man again. 

He has to take a break to let a spasm of physical agony at the thought consume him like a wildfire, helpless with muscles cringing. When it passes, he pants, leaking exhausted tears into his pillow.

A few more moments of thought, when he finally collects himself.

_ I won’t die, but I will want to die. _

**If your worry does come true, what’s most likely to happen?**

He tries to think it through reasonably.

_ She would let me down gently. I hope. _

_ She’d go on to get married and have kids like she deserves. I’d see her photos on Instagram. My life will continue the way it is now until I die. _

This is what will happen regardless.

**If my fear comes true, will it still matter in a week? A month? A year?**

“Yes,” he croaks. “Yes, it will.”

He knows this question is supposed to remind him that all sorrows will pass in time.

But this one truly won’t. He knows it won’t.

**If I look at the situation in a positive light, how is it different?**

He can’t wrap his head around this question.

_ What if it’s all a misunderstanding—what if the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen secretly loves me back? What if she doesn’t care that I’ve never held hands with a girl before her and doesn’t care that my brain is a trash fire that will never go out? _

What a world that would be.

A breath. Two.

The snowflakes in her hair as she kissed him for the first time. She had smiled while she kissed him. She held him so closely on the train.

She didn’t have to do that.

Maybe she had emotions that were hurt by this. Maybe she—

It hurts so badly to even graze the edges with his thoughts. The world where she really would have chosen him despite everything. And he ran away from her.

**What is your balanced, objective resolution that realistically reflects the situation?**

_ I might die in this room. Honestly, that’s realistic. _

He thinks it over carefully.

_The situation with her—even if I confront her and explain, probably the worst thing that will happen is she will say she wants nothing to do with me ever again. But that’s already what will happen if I do nothing._

_My memories of her will be ruined if she reacts badly, and those memories might be all I ever have of a relationship, so they are precious to me. It would be painful, maybe much worse than I feel now. Unbearable. _

He stares at his wrist, caught in metal.

_If she chooses and accepts me—that’s bad, too. _

He finally looks at the real problem, the one hidden by the fear of not wanting to hurt her in rut, and also hidden behind the fear of her rejection.

Ben pauses, throat bobbing. He hates to even think of it—it’s the heart of how broken and pathetic he is. Because—

_ What if it goes well? _

_ What if I have sex and it’s nice? _

_ What if she loves me back? _

If it worked out with her, by some miracle, what would that look like? For him? 

A relationship. 

It’s impossible to think he’d ever be comfortable with it, with her. His fear of not being good enough, it would eat at him. It would be a constant battle, and the special stress and agony of trying to cope with the last week would continue indefinitely. For the rest of his life, he’d vibrate with anxiety, not ever be able to rest or relax. 

The longer she stays, the more painful it will be to lose her. That has always been true.

He’d have to do this kind of work—examining his thoughts—constantly. Fearing hurting her, and not being good enough for her, and trying to match with her when he knows she’s so much better than him. He’d have to try, and stretch himself, and learn new things, and it would be so deeply painful. Forever. 

It would be a chosen pain, something he invited in. No guarantees.

“Rey,” he murmurs, feeling the haze of hormones overwhelm him again. 

To stave off a panic attack, he wedges his body between his mattress and the boxspring. His bed is large, and the heavy weight of the mattress presses against every inch of him, compressing him. He hasn’t done this in years.

He can hear his own loud breath, even and slow, diaphragm having to push the weight of the mattress to fill his lungs. His heartbeat pounds steadily in his ears. He feels cradled, head turned ninety degrees so he can breathe.

It feels good.

The heavy weight, pressed so firmly, is an anchor. He imagines the feeling must be a little like being held in bed at night.

He falls asleep that way.

  
  
  
  
  


In his dreams, he is calm and confident, warmed to the bone by the sun. 

He’s not self-conscious about his body or his personality, he doesn’t feel like he is being judged or looked at, even by himself. He’s allowed to exist without being afraid.

When she smiles at him, he believes it. He knows her completely. What she feels, he feels. He doesn’t have to worry about what he’ll say or do, or worry she will leave if he doesn’t continually prove himself to her. He doesn’t have to worry. Because she loves him, too. They understand each other and they’ve made promises to each other.

Steady and secure, no shame or hesitation. He’s good at it—he takes good care of her. He is allowed to hold her. They match.

  
  
  
  


He wakes when the press of the mattress won’t allow him to turn over, his eyes stinging again.

Now the picture is so specific. It used to be vague ideas of being held in his bed in the dark of night. But now it’s only her.

The moment he saw her for the first time, he was doomed. There’s pain no matter how he tries to climb the muddy cliff. He’d have never felt this pain if he had never left his old apartment, never reconciled with his family, never seen her.

But he knows that would not have been better. Since he started the climb, he’s been happier. No matter how strained his relationship is to his parents, he has a relationship with them again. He’s glad he left that dark apartment, the bottom of the pit.

He’s glad he met her. He’s glad he tried, even through the crippling pain.

And if it’s always going to be painful, he wants to continue to try as hard as he can.

He knows what he has to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book that Ben took from his shelf is a book that I could find in my own bookshelf if I er, locked myself to my bed with handcuffs on accident—“The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation & Distress Tolerance.” It’s a good read. Some of the content in this chapter comes from this workbook.
> 
> The next chapter will for sure have Rey, and be up — sometime this weekend, sorry, something came up. Thank you for reading! Your comments have meant the world to me. 🥺


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows what he has to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The absolutely wonderful indy_draws drew me [beautiful fanart of Ben and Rey sledding](https://twitter.com/indy_draws/status/1198355569179951104?s=20). I’m so happy, it’s been my phone background for ages 🥰🥰🥰

In the end, Ben picks the lock on the handcuffs. He uses a pair of glasses with thin frames as the pick, breaking and bending the metal into useful shapes. He isn’t wild and spiraling with panic, this time, but firm and determined.

His father showed him how to do it, once. He can see it in his mind’s eye—his dad’s quiet boasting voice while showing off for his son, the careful detailed steps so that Ben would know how to do it. 

Ben remembers now, how his dad showed him to bend the metal of the tool to find the right spot for leverage, how it is a simple question of giving the teeth nothing to hold onto.

The teeth unlock and suddenly move, slipping out like it’s always been easy; the handcuffs open.

For a few seconds, it doesn’t register that he is free. The full weight of the handcuffs falls against his bruised wrist, unconnected to the bed. 

“Thank fuck.”

Freedom. A surprised laugh escapes him. He trembles from head to toe in enormous relief. 

He runs at once to the kitchen, throws on the light to find them—

—the small key to the handcuffs, which he puts safely in his pocket.

—and his phone, which is caught up under the stove. 

Hands trembling, he presses the power button, but it’s out of batteries.

“Fuck shit.”

He runs to his room, plugging it into the wall. As he impatiently waits for it to charge, he tears pants out of his closet and puts them on, and then shoves his feet into his boots, huffing with frustration at the laces. 

His phone beeps on. He fumbles with it—unlocks it—

The first messages he sees are from his dad from the past few days, the first on Monday morning, and the last yesterday.

**Dad: **Lunch today?  
  
**Dad: **Where are you, kid?  
  
**Dad: **You there?

And a missed call from his dad.

There’s also a text from his mom, from yesterday after his dad hadn’t reached him.

**Mom: **I know you don’t like presents, but I have a Christmas decoration for you. Can I stop by?

So—they would have found him if he hadn’t gotten free. They have been looking for him because they miss him. They love him.

They wouldn’t have ever let him die.

There’s a strange heaviness and a lightness in his chest at the same time, knowing that. They were looking for him. He had really mended things with them, and the work he’d done was all worth it.

There’s a new text from Rey.

All the blood leaves his face; he feels cold. He closes his eyes for just one final second, and then he reads it.

**Rey: **Come say that to my face, Ben Solo.

His already pounding heart stumbles with hope.

He races to his front door, grabbing his keys, shoving his other arm through his coat sleeve, not bothering with his shirt. The handcuffs still hang from his other wrist.

At the threshold of his door, his feet pause, the same way they used to when he’d stopped being able to leave the apartment where he used to live. His brain is so worked up that old fears that he considered overcome—his agoraphobia, his fear of going outside and being seen—have woken up, sniffing the air for blood.

Behind him, in his condo, is safety and comfort, and the familiar loneliness that he’s survived for all his adult life. He knows nothing else.

Ahead is certain pain.

And maybe her.

_ It is going to be hard, but you can do hard things. You have been through harder things than this, and you can do this, too. _

The words are from the book, and for some reason they work. He breaks through the temptation to give in to comfort, steps over the threshold and locks the door behind him. 

And then he starts to run.

—

After work, she can’t bring herself to take the train home right away, so she takes a walk instead, letting herself just mope as the sun sets. 

It was a mistake, he’d said. Having sex with her, or going on a date with her at all.

Ben wouldn’t even kiss her—not really, not like he really meant it. She’d flung herself at him, came on way too strong. She couldn’t read the room, and thought his scent meant he had to want her. So quickly.

And he’d politely ran the hell away, even though she knew he was going into rut. She let her insecurity and desperation show because she felt safe, and now—

It’s been a few days, and it’s weird that she’s still thinking about it so much. But it really is a big yikes, and she winces every time she thinks about it. He didn’t even finish having sex with her. And he didn’t even bother to answer her. He was clear.

New York is supposed to be where she finally finds her place, her family, far away from her past. Free, alone, finally. With friends and a new life.

But her parents aren’t here. Maybe they were never here. Maybe it’s just all a series of mistakes, and no one’s ever going to really want her like that.

There aren’t as many people walking out in the dead of winter. She finds a little park, brushes snow off a bench away from the wind and sits under the skeletal fingers of trees. What view of the lower Manhattan skyline she can see unobscured by big buildings is washed by the afternoon sunlight.

She eats a meal replacement bar from her backpack and lets herself feel lousy. The few pedestrians out while it’s snowing are in a hurry to go elsewhere, their heads down. There isn’t any birdsong, and generally the sound is muted by the snowfall.

Then she senses him.

Smells him, the faintest hint of him on her palate—the unmistakable aroma of an Alpha, deeply in rut. Goose pimples cascade down her whole body and her vision hyper-focuses. Rey goes still as the grave.

Not just any Alpha, but him. The one whose scent she still can’t get out of her mouth.

When she finds him, he looks just like the first time she ever saw him. Across the street—a figure in a coat with dark hair, who sees her, smells her as well, and stands perfectly still to match her, watching her. 

The hunter.

Slowly, quietly, moving with an old instinct, he walks forward, toward her. Her muscles are trembling from adrenaline. Little jolts go through her legs, reminding her she can run. She should. None of it is logical; it all just runs through the deepest and most animal part of her.

Rey shoots to her feet, and takes a step, and he freezes. She freezes too. 

After a moment, he stalks forward once more.

He looks intense, his hair wild and his boots strangely loose with the laces tucked in. He is wearing an open coat but no shirt or sweater underneath it. When he’s within feet of her, he stops short, breathing and taking her in, just as she’s taking him in.

Snowflakes are falling directly on his bare chest, making his skin pink. His eyes are black and intent on hers.

She doesn’t run.

“How did you—?” she asks, voice quiet. “How are you here?”

“I hunted you.”

That must be the rut talking. His eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, and he smells like something she wants to bite into or rub against. He must have gone to her work and followed her scent from there. The realization makes her nipples prick beneath her clothes.

She has never experienced his scent this way before. It is potent, aggressive. It smells like a bright drop of daylight in winter. If she drowned in it, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

The first time she ever saw him, before she’d ever seen what his face looked like, she’d felt the incredible urge to sink to the ground and wait for his inspection and his glowing approval.

Well, she’d done that. And her Alpha hadn’t approved of her. He left her.

Rey belatedly realizes she is sucking in air through her teeth, and her limbs are shaking with the urge to run from him. To make him chase her and prove himself.

“You said to come say it to your face,” he says in a low, rough voice.

“I did say that, I guess.” 

“I called. I tried calling you. Just now. You didn’t answer and my phone died.”

“I’m sure.” She goes for boredom, but she knows she sounds too hurt. Her phone is still on silent for work.

For some reason, this feels like what she always wanted—someone coming after her and finding her—just her—in the sea of humanity. She wants to forgive him just for that, but it’s messed up that she’s so forgiving. She always forgives.

His eyes are so soft. “I’m sorry, Rey.”

“Ben, it was just a bad date. I got the message, you don’t need to turn this into a thing.”

A flicker of hurt, his eyes huge. “I… I see.” He looks at his boots, but doesn’t move. After a moment, he takes a deep breath, shaking his head. “But this... _is_ a thing, to me. This is very important to me.”

Very important. 

She’s breathing hard, frowning. “Okay.”

“Please... let me explain and then if you still want, I’ll—I’ll leave.”

“You’ll leave?” It comes out strangled. “Like you did before, even though you’re—you’re in rut. You’re fully in rut right now!”

“That doesn’t matter. I just—I don’t want to pressure you.”

“Why don’t you have a sweater? Or even a shirt?” she asks abruptly, hating that so much of his skin is exposed to the falling snow. 

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Close your coat. You’re going to freeze.” Her hands clench into fists to stop her from buttoning him up herself, and she really is angry now. “You need to be inside, inside with someone helping you.”

“Someone,” he repeats, eyes wide and hesitant. “Not… not you?”

“You didn’t _want_ me.” It’s so humiliating to say out loud. Her voice catches. “Why didn’t you stay?”

His eyes are so deep with emotion, everything is just… there. Frustration and yearning, and sadness.

It takes him many dreadful seconds to answer.

“I panicked. I’m sorry. I have... I have an anxiety disorder.”

She was so sure he would say he had a girlfriend, or that he really doesn’t want her after all; her shoulders loosen a little. “l know you’re a little shy.”

“It’s not just being shy, it’s—” He pauses, struggling against something inwardly, staring away at the snow falling, blinking rapidly. “It’s, the kind of anxiety I have is… debilitating. And very painful. It’s stopped me from doing a lot of things I wanted to do in my life.”

“Like—”

“I’ve never done anything like this before.”

His strange shyness, his mute kisses.

He stares at anything but her eyes—at their feet, at the people walking nearby, at the trees. 

His voice shakes a little. “I haven’t ever..... kissing or going on dates, or even holding hands. Or anything like that.”

He’s a virgin. Or he was.

“Oh,” she says.

He turns back to study her with an intense, challenging expression. “Oh?”

It’s almost hard for her to believe, that someone as handsome as him never had any kind of experience at all. No one ever held his hand? Or stole a kiss from him?

Is she really his first? His first at everything? The realization makes something hard inside her soften and turn tender toward him.

“Why not?” she asks. “Because of the anxiety?”

He looks thrown off, not finding what he was bracing for in her expression. He nods. “It was just impossible for me. And it’s… been fine. My whole life, I’ve known what my limits are. So being able to do something like that, even a little, has been…” Ben turns his face away from her, but she still sees the way his jaw works. “...so special. To me. I never thought I’d—”

He cuts off, and she can hear him swallowing. His sadness makes her sad, too.

“I wish you’d told me. I would have tried to make it special for you.”

“It was special,” he says, eyes bright.

“Was? You keep talking like it’s all just over.”

“Isn’t it? I—I was putting off reality. I was pretending with you, pretending like I was normal and I could hold your hand and… kiss you and go home with you.”

“But… you weren’t pretending. You did every single one of those things.”

“And then I had a mental breakdown for three days,” he growls, like an animal caught in thorny brush. “Fuck, why the fuck did I say that?”

He stands there, eyes shut and face turned away, whole body stiff and tense.

She reaches out a hand and touches his cold-pinked chest, the lightest brush, and he shudders under her fingers. He breathes like a bellows, peeking at her through his eyelashes. A sheen of sweat is on him, even in the cold, as he burns up from the inside like a high fever. 

She presses her hand to his clavicle, feeling his racing pulse. 

His eyes squeeze shut again, tightly. 

“So you were in rut, all alone? For the past three days?”

He nods, still tense and withdrawn.

“And then you came to find me.”

“Yes. Because I want you to know it’s not your fault. And I want to tell you—I want you to have whatever you want. If it’s something I can give you, I want you to have it. Anything.”

“Anything?”

He’s spilling it all out in a torrent. “I know I messed up. You don’t have to see me. You can have the dinners with my parents. I won’t go to them anymore. You can have the family you want. They’ll take care of you like you wanted. My mom will help you if you need advice.”

She rubs the gland on his neck, washing him in comforting feelings. It’s harder to understand what he’s saying so desperately. “You want me to have dinner with your parents without you?”

“You deserve them. More than me. And they won’t mind, honestly, if I ask them. I treated them like shit for years. They chose you.”

“You’d give your... parents to me?”

“Yes,” he says simply. “I love you.” Big, even breaths filling up his lungs like wind hitting sails. “I wanted to tell you that, once.”

Rey’s heart trips inside her, tumbling. 

His eyes well with tears, simply overflowing and running down his cheeks when he blinks. He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s crying—leaking tears as if from a wound so ancient and grown around that it is hardly noticeable any more, but still it bleeds a few drops a year—his expression doesn’t change at all.

The scent of him, his warmth, the sudden painful racing of her heart, it all connects together. The loved son who wants for nothing, wanting _her_, the one who has always been overlooked and left behind. Saying he loves her and meaning it. A stupidly empty part of her would give all she has for more of it.

He has never loved anyone else. She’s his first love. To keep that safe, and carefully tend it the way that hers wasn’t, is all she wants.

Rey steps into him, the warmth of his body almost steaming in the winter air. He’s absolutely fixated on her even as she reaches up and pulls him down. He comes to her, eyes wide.

Pressing her mouth against the very corner of his mouth, to the salty tears on his cheek, is easy. 

His breath hitches; he turns his face as if to catch her lips, but stops himself, trembling. His mouth feels magnetized to hers—the only reason they haven’t met is there is some distance there still, caught between them.

“You love me?”

“I do.” A quiet confession. “I do love you.”

It feels like a reward, to hear him say that, past all barriers.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

Two more old, big tears roll down his cheeks without him noticing. 

“I want it to be easy,” he whispers. “For once. I just want it to be easy.”

Rey hugs him, pulling him down and squeezing him. “It’s okay,” she soothes, heart bursting with something too delicate to name. 

She never knew how difficult it was for him, but now she can see it, and how he tries for her. It makes her want to burrow deep inside him until spring.

His arms still don’t come up to hold her. “Rey, I’m not healthy—this isn’t a lot to offer you. I want the world for you, you deserve more than this.”

“You said you’d give me whatever I want.”

“Anything I can,” he says shyly, brightening a little at just the thought of pleasing her. “I don’t have the longest reach, but name it and I’ll do what I can.”

“Anything in the world.”

“Yes.”

“The moon and the stars.”

He gets a little wide-eyed at the romance of that, and then the slightest smile creases his wet eyes. “Maybe one or two stars.”

“Anything I want.”

“Yes, anything.”

“Ben, I just want you.” She kisses his cheek again. “Just you.” She presses against him to shield him from the cold air with her own body. “That's all.”

He crumbles, curled toward her, but still not taking her in his arms, strangely stiff. “I want you to be happy.”

“I will be.”

“I don’t know if I can make you happy.”

“You already do. Except you can’t leave me, like that. Ever again. You can’t leave me alone. It made me feel so terrible, like you didn’t even like me.”

“I do like you,” he chokes, bent against her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Rey. I was scared I was hurting you.”

“Hurting me?” 

“When I hurt you with my big cock.”

That startles a laugh out of her—he says it so seriously. At her laugh, he looks wounded, shrinking back from her, but Rey catches his waist. “Is that what that was? You didn’t hurt me with your big cock. You pinched me with your big cock. It wasn’t bad.”

“But—you said it hurt.” 

“It did a little, but I just needed to adjust to it. I liked it.”

His forehead touches hers, in relief and embarrassment. “Really?”

“I think I was going to love it, actually.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“I need to think about that,” he says, voice shaking. 

She nuzzles into his neck.

“If you want me, I won’t ever leave,” he promises lowly. “And I’ll try to tell you if something is wrong.”

There’s a strange clink as he shifts. 

Rey frowns. “What is that?”

He avoids her eyes. “My rut is strange, and I didn’t know— I wanted to be safe. So—”

Both his hands are locked behind him.

“Handcuffs?” she asks, incredulous. Then she smiles her widest smile. “Kinky, Ben. I had no idea.”

“It’s not—it’s not like that, it’s—” Then his mouth shuts with the audible sound of his teeth clicking together. His face is bright red, and has been for a while.

Rey takes mercy on him. “Where is the key?”

“In my coat pocket.”

She fishes it out, careful not to drop it, and unlocks him from his handcuffs. When he is finally free, Ben rubs his right wrist, pulling his coat sleeve down, and the handcuffs go safely into her backpack.

“Your rut,” she starts. “It hasn’t ended in three days?”

He looks sheepish. “I don’t know what’s happening. I should probably go to the doctor.”

“But you didn’t go. Instead you came looking for me.”

He doesn’t argue, just looking at her hopefully.

“You know exactly what you need,” she says, low in his ear. “Shouldn’t you finish what you started?”

He doesn’t argue with that, either, or when she buttons up his coat, or when she takes his hand in hers and leads him home.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben go home to have sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the added tags! Thank you for your patience and encouragement the past few wild months. Sorry for any mistakes, I’ve read this too many times it lost all meaning and I might have missed something. 🙈

“No one’s ever touched you before?” she asks quietly so that the Lyft driver can’t overhear her. 

He shakes his head. He’s remarkably calm with the scent of her near him. But it’s an expectant calm, a heavy snow waiting for the avalanche.

“No one has ever taken care of you? You’ve gone through every rut alone?”

He nods, unable to speak of it.

“That must have been hard.”

It has been hard. His throat closes.

She smiles a little—he can hear it in her voice. “I was your first kiss?” 

“And my last,” he whispers impulsively. 

He immediately feels self-conscious at his own claim—he sounds like a teenager, not a grown man who lives in the real world.

But then he swallows that shame with rebellious determination: she will be his last.

Let anyone doubt him. Let her challenge him. He’ll prove it.

“Your last?” 

“Yes.”

It was… it might have been premature to tell her that he loves her, and maybe he should have kept that to himself. Maybe people would laugh at him for saying it so soon. Maybe he’s only sure about it in the way a teenager in love for the first time is sure, while real adults roll their eyes, knowing better.

Maybe Rey heard his confession and now she sees him as naive, like a pitiful little boy in a man’s body, who’s been hiding away from the world for years.

But it’s the truth. His jaw clenches. He does love her. He will never change his mind about her, and he will love her until he dies. He will never stop. These feelings belong to him.

Stealing a shy glance at her, his breath catches to find her already looking at him. Rey’s smile is so wide and giddy that her eyes crinkle.

His body found her in the press of humanity, hunted her and somehow found her. Just her. And he didn’t hurt her, and now he’s free. It was like a miracle.

The sun is finally setting—the tops of the skyscrapers are lit in tongues of flame, and their shadows are cold with winter.

“But you didn’t… Do you not like kissing me?” she asks him quietly. “Was it a bad first kiss?”

“No! No, it was perfect.”

She frowns, and he knows she doesn’t believe him. 

“I like you... kissing me,” he explains. “I like it so much. But I don’t want to be... bad at doing it to you.”

“How can you know you’re good or bad at it? You said you’ve never done it before.”

He frowns at the seat in front of him. “There was a girl, a girl at summer camp, when I was a teenager, and she acted like even the thought of…” He’s never spoken of this, not even to his therapist. He pauses for a long moment before he can force it out. “...kissing me was... disgusting. So it’s… not as easy as I thought.”

“She was wrong,” Rey’s voice is firm and no-nonsense. “May I?”

Rey sits up and leans into him, and so he turns back to her. She’s closer than he thought, smiling softly at him. He can see the freckles on her nose, and how the green of her eyes has been lost in the dusk light.

Ben’s eyes fall to her lips.

He wants to. Oh, he wants.

Rey puts her hand to his cheek and presses her lips to his.

He’s still frozen; the only movement he can allow his lips is a gasp open, a slight parting, staring at her with wide eyes. Rey kisses his upper lip and then his lower lip, the soft noise of it oddly loud in his ears. She's really kissing him again.

Ben thought she would never kiss him ever again, that he’d had his last kiss, that he had ruined it. His heart is flinging itself violently against his ribs as her breath warms his skin.

She says against his cheek, “You can move your mouth if you want.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

He wants to, but he freezes. He fails when he tries.

It’s like trying to convince himself to touch a turned-off stove, even though he knows intellectually it’s safe. It’s just easier to not touch the stove because he spent so many years thinking stoves are dangerous. 

His mouth stays completely still. Lips and chin tremble slightly until he clenches his teeth to stop them.

Just as he fixates on how bad and painfully awkward he is—god, it must be like kissing a dead fish—Rey bites gently down on his lower lip in a very smooth move, and when Ben opens his mouth in a gasp, her tongue sweeps his lips and enters his mouth a little. Once, twice.

_French kissing_, he thinks.

It’s strange, and sensuous, and her strong taste blossoms on his tongue—just as good as she smells. 

Omega. Rey. Perfect.

Fuck, her tongue is touching his in his mouth. Wet-on-wet. A zing runs down his spine, and before he can stop himself, he makes an embarrassing sound, the kind of sound he always tried to stifle ever since he was young. It just slips out of him.

Rey pulls back, pleased at his dazed expression. “Now you kiss me.”

Unthinking, he cups her jaw, fingers in her beautiful hair, cradling her neck just so. It’s the first time he really kisses her on his own, but it’s another chaste, frozen kiss, though pressed firmly. The thought of moving his mouth or even pursing his lips is too hard. But he’s kissing her, guiding the kiss with his hands. Nuzzling closer to her. Her lips are so soft and his heart goes fuzzy. He loves her.

Rey’s eyes open dreamily, her face cradled between his hands. “I knew you were born to kiss, with a mouth like that. You should always be kissing me.”

His brows knit. He wishes she wouldn’t praise him when he is getting it so wrong. But her words sound like an invitation, so he kisses her again, and then again, in long presses. Each one gives him a tremendous thrill, like he is entering a brand new land, but he—

How does he move his mouth? There’s just a strange, stupid mental block stopping him—it’s like his brain, to keep him safe, has labeled “French kissing” with the same strong, unconscious, self-preserving “do not ever do this” phobia as jumping off a building.

Rey blinks curiously. “You’re keeping your eyes open?”

Ben tries to catch his breath. Is that bad? He can’t remember anything from the youtube kissing tutorials—he has no idea. “Yes? I don’t want to... I don’t want to miss anything.”

Rey smiles, scenting his neck gland with her wrist and melding their scents, which thankfully washes him in the comforting feeling of his Omega claiming him, otherwise he would be tempted to open the car door and barrel roll into the slush.

“You stopped breathing, too,” she notes.

Who holds their breath? “I’m sorry. This is harder than I thought. Maybe it’s not a good idea. I don’t want you to have to deal with...“

“Deal with...?”

“Any of it. Like having to teach me. Like the kissing. I feel bad.”

In answer, she kisses him again, deeply. Her hands steady him. He tries to memorize what she is doing. This time, though he’s still frozen, he remembers to breathe and he tries closing his eyes. As soon as he does, the sensations and intimacy of kissing multiply and overwhelm him. But he misses looking at her, and he feels more steady with his eyes open.

She tastes good, and sometimes he can even touch his tongue to hers, when she licks inside his mouth. But even that tiny movement of his own tongue makes his heart stumble.

“But I like kissing you,” she whispers, smiling. “I want to teach you. You’re not a burden, Ben. I like you better than that.”

Ben twists with painful pleasure. She likes him better than that. 

She likes him?

“And besides,” Rey continues. “You think teaching you would be hard? That I wouldn't want to see your face when you feel things for the first time? You don’t know the things I want to do to you.”

No, he doesn’t know.

“Imagine how you’d feel in my shoes. If you were teaching me.”

“Ah.” He can understand that. If he was more experienced than her, he would want to take care of her, and only give her good things, and make her feel safe and loved. He would love her so well he’d lose sleep over it. He would be obsessed.

Applying the same in reverse to himself is harder because he doesn’t understand the appeal. 

Rey tilts her head, as if she’s trying to figure him out. “But if you’re saying you want to wait, we can. I know you’re in rut, but it should be comfortable for you. It’s like dancing. If we don’t feel like dancing, we don’t have to.”

His heart drops into his stomach. Did his failure kisses change her mind? 

“But you like… dancing.”

“Yes, but I don’t have to dance every day.”

“But sometimes you do have to. Your heat is coming soon. I don’t want—”

“To spend it with me?” she supplies, but he shakes his head.

“I don’t want you to spend it with someone else. I want to be the one to help you, so I need to learn how to help you. As soon as I can.”

“You’re hurrying just to help me?” Her voice is quiet and touched. “That puts you under pressure.”

His lips thin, and though he doesn’t look at her, neither does he take back his request. “It’s what I want.”

Finally, she offers, “We still don’t have to. I can spend my heat alone. I’ve done it before, many times.”

He looks directly at her. “No. I won’t ever leave you alone again.”

Rey’s eyes go very round. After a long moment, her lower lip trembles and now she is the one to avoid his eyes, blinking too quickly.

She’s used to being able to hide her emotions, he realizes. And he struck some real emotion in her just by promising her something that he’ll never take back. It makes him as steady and certain as cement, full of hope.

“I would do anything to spend it with you,” he adds before he can rein himself in. 

Rey sounds overly cheerful to cover her emotional moment. “Well, if you feel that strongly, we’ll give it a try. I have this feeling you’re going to be a prodigy. I can’t wait to take all the credit, Alpha.”

A prodigy. He shrinks a little, inside himself. He just wants to be normal, as soon as possible. “If I can have some time, I hope that I can get... better at it.”

Her eyes twinkle, trying to lighten the mood. “Even better? I’m going to be in so much trouble.” 

Right, sure.

She pokes him in the chest. “That girl who wouldn’t kiss you at summer camp? She was just being mean. Or maybe she was shy.”

“Shy?”

“Yes, like how I feel next to you.”

Ben stares at her. “What?”

“You must have been big then, too. Tall, with wide shoulders. Handsome, beautiful black hair. I wish I had seen you as a teenager, you must have been so cute.” Rey’s voice is dreamy.

He drops his hands. “Don’t.”

Rey frowns.

“I’m not… those things. You don’t have to do that. You don’t need to pretend like—I’m well aware I’m not...”

“Handsome?” 

He just looks at the seat in front of him. Why did he say that? It’s not like she doesn’t have eyes to see it for herself.

The car stops for a red light.

“You’ve spent so much time alone and yet you don’t know very much about yourself,” she says quietly. “You’re so handsome that I get stupid sometimes, looking at you.”

She seems so sincere. He keeps his mouth shut.

_Tall, wide shoulders, beautiful hair, cute, handsome_.

He has never heard this before from anyone except his mom a few times, when she complained about how her handsome son didn’t date. But all mothers call their sons handsome, so that never meant anything.

_So handsome that she gets stupid sometimes. _

Ben wants to take Rey’s words and hide away and think over them, and work out exactly how he feels about the woman he loves saying something like that to him. Maybe she does see certain things better than he does. She likes him better than that.

But before he knows it, they’re at his building, taking the elevator to his condo.  
  
  


—  
  


Rey insists they go back to his place and not to hers—“because you’re in rut and you should be in your own bed”—and he only smiles a little at how his stupid bed nearly killed him, and now he’s come back to use it with her. His real adult bed that he bought with so much stupid hope.

The bed failed to kill him, and always mocked him, and now he’s hopefully going to have sex on it to really rub it in.

The cycle of rut is coming for him with the weight of a steadily approaching train, with all their kisses and her scent, and his awareness of her is unraveling him. He hunted her, and he caught her, and now she is his.

Ben realizes with a start that he has pinned Rey to the wall as soon as he locked the door behind them—he just walked her into the wall to feel her, fulfilling some strange primal need he doesn’t understand.

She touches him.

With her touch on his collarbones, her bare hands on his skin under the coat, he is shocked by the revelation—he has a body, a real flesh-and-blood body that can be touched and held. 

It is a body that has gone so long without touch that it is like when the rain can’t seep into the cracked and parched desert and instead washes away off the surface, not able to penetrate after the long years of drought. The rain of her touch is too much to absorb at first. He can’t bear the intimacy of it, like his heart is peeling open, and then her touch starts to seep into the cracks of him, his sharp heart eases, and it—

It becomes good. Better than good.

She kisses his neck and it makes him grind into her unconsciously, pinning her hands to the wall. When he grinds into her, she moans. “Ben…”

Fuck. He makes her moan?

The first rush of success, of doing something right and making her feel good, makes him break out in a relieved grin. Maybe he can do this.

“Can I use your shower?” Rey asks suddenly.

“Uh… yes?” His brain can’t understand the request. 

“You can shower with me, if you want to.” She bites her bottom lip. “Undress me?”

His shaking hands find the zipper of her coat, and the slippery puffy material slides down her arms to the floor. He grasps her polo shirt with his dad’s company logo on it convulsively and untucks it with a near-vicious yank that makes Rey gasp. 

_Calm the fuck down_, he tells himself. _Don’t you dare hurt her. Gently. Be nice._

His whole world focuses on the scrap of stomach skin he can see. Rey puts her arms over her head, grinning up at him. Obediently, slowly, he pulls her shirt up and off. 

He has seen her naked before, but he was disassociating pretty hard at the time. Now, more comfortable and in his own home, and on the same page as her, he remembers details to her nakedness. She has little freckles on her shoulders and her bra is white and worn and plain. Her dark hair rests on her bare collarbones. Her ribs and stomach move with her breath.

She is the most beautiful person he has ever seen, lovely in a way that hurts, piercing him and burying inside him somewhere, to live with him all the rest of his life.

Rey reaches behind herself and unlatches her bra. It rests loosely, tantalizingly against her small breasts. He feels as if he’s under a spell as he slides the straps from her shoulders, freeing her. 

Her little breasts are perfect. He wants to touch them more than anything he’s ever wanted to touch before. He wants to take up handfuls of her and pinch her between his finger and thumb until she’s just writhing with it, until she makes those noises again.

He doesn’t touch them. Frozen again, he just looks.

Rey unbuttons and slips off his own coat for him so they match, both exposed from the waist up.

She is beautiful and just for him. He leans down to mouth his way down her throat, spurred to find the source of her scent, so urgently that he bends her over backwards a little. 

“Ben, ah—the shower....”

He has her gland in his mouth now, and it’s heaven. This is where he lives, now. This is what he was always meant to do—lick her neck, saturate himself in this perfect pure love. He wants to come, and she’ll help him come, she’s so sweet and good, and all his—

“Ben,” she laughs, her breath coming fast. “Focus, Alpha.”

That actually works, for reasons he can’t name. Her voice, like nothing else, makes it through to him and he focuses, tense as a strung bow.

She leads him by the hand into his room, but stops abruptly. “Um. Why... is your bed in your bathroom?”

With superhuman speed and strength, and fueled by a nightmarish black hole of embarrassment that she saw a part of how pathetic his last few days have been, Ben pushes the bed back where it goes, panting with adrenaline. “It was a weird rut.”

Rey’s laugh fades as her eyes widen in horror. “Your wrist! When did this happen?”

Ben looks down and sees his bruised right wrist that was absolutely mangled by the handcuffs.

“...I wanted to go where you were, so I handcuffed myself… to my bed.”

She touches the edges of the discoloration gently. “Does it hurt?”

He promised to tell her the truth. “A little. But the handcuffs are off now. You took them off, so it’s not bad.”

“You wanted to come back to me this badly.”

He nods, feeling shy. It was such a private thing, how he cried for her. But maybe she’ll believe him now. He does want her. He didn’t mean to leave her.

“You wanted me this much,” she murmurs.

“I need you that much.” He feels like he’s losing the edges of his sanity.

_I love you_, he thinks, but he swallows the words. 

Rey kisses his wrist tenderly. “Poor Alpha.” Another kiss. “I’m here now.”

That feels like something he’s been waiting to hear for a long time.

Her hand comes forward, so close to his cock, and when she unzips him and unbuttons him, he can feel the vibration. Half-nervous and half-impatient for her to finally see him, to touch him, he holds his breath as she slides down his waistband.

When he springs free, he truly _springs_, and he likes that she bites her lip, looking down at him. He’s tense but proud, hyper-aware of any change in her expression. He’s so hard for her, he’s twitching in time with his heartbeat, seeking her.

She can have his body, and his cock, or whatever else she wants from him. Anything.

He fixates on the sound of the zipper of her jeans, and the soft susurration as they come off. He tries to ignore his own nakedness as he turns on the shower for her.

In the next moment, he finds his hands on her waist, shuddering with the urge to lift her and fuck her against the shower wall.

“Wait,” she laughs. “I know, I’m sorry. Wait just a few minutes. We’re not safe and clean yet. Please take care of me first, Alpha.”

She’s right. They need to be in a warm, dry place. A comfortable place. Not here. The focus clears his head a little.

“Clean all the smell of work away,” she instructs him. “The oil and grease. I’m sorry I don’t smell good. I want to smell so good for you.”

“But you already do,” he says, not understanding her insistence.

But he takes up a washcloth obediently. He warms it under the spray and lathers it with his soap, and then hesitates. Deciding her hands are the most innocuous, he delicately takes one of her hands in his, as if he’s leading her to dance—_or taking her hand at the altar_, his brain supplies.

That thought makes his hands shake a little, even just washing her fingers, her hand and wrist. Her wrist leads to her forearm, up her arm to her shoulder, and he’s glad Rey has closed her eyes because he is harder than he’s ever been in his life.

Rey bites her lip, and then her lips part as he passes the washcloth over her clavicle to her other shoulder and carefully washes her other arm, down to her fingers.

His shaking hands smooth over her, her arms, her waist. Her skin has a different texture than his, softer and slightly more yielding.

A smile pulls at Rey’s lips as Ben faces the choice of what to wash next—her breasts? between her legs?—and then chooses a safe option, kneeling to carefully wash her feet. He washes her soles, her ankles, her calves, moving upward, valiantly trying to ignore how close his face is to her crotch.

For a moment, he trembles, wanting to bury his face there, to seek out her taste and coat his tongue with her, to lose himself in her and never resurface as long as he lives—

“You’re making me so clean,” she praises.

As she braces her hands on his shoulders for balance, he valiantly refocuses on his mission to wash her. He likes everything about caring for her like this, raging hard-on and all. He’s never felt like this before in rut, like he’s in control but also completely out of his mind.

A disappointed breath puffs out of her as he avoids her crotch, rubbing from her thighs to her stomach, and then around to her back, and under her arms, while Rey laughs and braces herself on him again, trying to escape and stand still at the same time. “That’s too ticklish! It’s not fair!”

Somehow, her laughing and grabbing him pushes them together, and his penis grazes her soft stomach. He freezes.

“Oh.” His ears are ringing.

Instinctively, he presses closer until the full length of him is against her soft belly. Her pebbled nipples brush his chest and he gasps again, pressing her back to the tiled wall, humping helplessly against her, hearing her matching gasps, the surge of her scent, her want. She wants this. The desperate urge is to line up the right way with her. They could feel so good, he could open her up, he could be home inside her, finally—

He kisses her, hard and close-mouthed and just bursting with love. “Rey, Rey,” he pants.

Rey puts the slightest pressure on his shoulders. “Ben, finish washing me first.”

Washing?

His cock twitches against her skin, leaking.

Washing. That’s right. She needs to be clean and dry and safe. She wants to smell good. Somehow, she doesn’t believe she already does.

He’s lost the cloth. His hands will do. He cups her breasts in his hands for the first time, perfect handfuls. Made for him. Awe fills him, that she would be so soft. He wants them in his mouth. He cleans her well.

Then it is Rey’s turn to wash him, and the sensation makes him freeze up as she copies the way he had washed her, started with his hands and arms. 

He has been a ghost all his life, and he didn’t know it. How dead he was, how afraid. How much he was missing, for how long. He is only now coming alive under her warm fingers, her palms, a living human body only where she touches him. 

“Rey,” he breathes, moved.

Gratitude locks his throat. He feels endless affection for her, and longing for more of it. If she touches him everywhere, he’ll be alive like everyone else. He’ll touch like people do. He doesn’t deserve it, but he wants to feel alive. Surely he can have this, for a little while. Surely it isn’t too much to ask.

Her touch is life, but it stings; the lifelong certainty that he isn’t good enough, that he isn’t allowed to do this, is deeply painful. But mixed in with and almost ruined by the pain, is goodness—her touch also feels decadent and natural and rebellious, a wonder he will never deserve. It is paralyzing to feel her touch, yet he is a plant drinking in the sun of her.

The two opposite feelings choke inside him.

By the time she kneels, he is shaking. His cock is pointing at her lips. 

Rey is looking right at it and then up to meet his eyes. His cock is pulsing as if it could move enough to touch her lips on its own. The urge to thrust, to cradle her face in his hands, to urge her physically, is stupidly strong. He doesn’t move except to steady himself on the wall.

“Please,” he whispers.

Please, he’ll do anything. Hasn’t he waited so long for her? All his life.

Let her touch him. 

With a smile, Rey feigns confusion and washes his feet, his calves, his thighs, just as he did to her.

Torture. This is sweet torture. He’s dying.

“Rey, please. Please.”

“Should I touch you, Ben?”

He nods, breathing hard.

“Should I kiss your cock?”

He doesn’t know how to express the depth of his want, how much he needs her to either kiss him or kill him. “Rey.”

She kisses the tip of his cock, and he curses, his hips jerking forward helplessly. But it’s as if she knew he’d react that way because she leans back at the same time, smiling up at him. His hand scrambles for a better hold on the wall.

Rey brings up both her hands and encircles his cock from the base, squeezing.

Then she just rests him on her tongue, looking up at him. Her mouth closes around him. Her mouth is full of him; her eyes are happy, because she likes him and she wants him, wants him in her mouth. His mind goes white with static. He never thought of this.

“I’m going to come,” he says, suddenly spiking with panic.

It feels too good. He’s not in control. She’s going to see—if she stays there, he’ll make a mess of her. He’s always hidden the mess he wants to make. He’s never shown anyone.

He doesn’t deserve this. This isn’t for him.

“I want you to,” she removes him from her mouth long enough to say. “Don’t you want to?”

“I can’t—” His tortuous mouth, his brain is on fire. “I can’t, not like that. I didn’t think that you would... I didn’t think—I’m not—”

Rey immediately releases him and stands up, cradling his face, careful not to brush against his penis. “Okay, Ben. You don’t have to, it’s okay.”

He winces as the panic flows through jinx Hands almost desperately tight at her waist, he holds her to him, willing her not to leave.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Rey shushes him. “Nonsense. There’s nothing to be sorry about. We’re just dancing, remember?”

“I’m not good at dancing,” he chokes, eyes closed and tilted toward her stroking hand.

“You’re fine. Don’t worry. It was my fault, I pushed you.”

She shouldn’t have to stop, or worry about pushing him. She should have what she wants. If Rey wants him to come, who the hell is he to keep it from her?

Rey is kissing his neck, releasing comforting hormones, and it smells like their scents will stay mixed together no matter what, that they belong together.

He finds the words.

“That was... It felt so good, but I just didn’t ever picture it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think you would… do that. To me. I’m not good at… doing things spontaneously.” He physically bites his tongue to stop the tide of apology, his eyes tightly shut. 

Rey kisses his chest. “Should I write you a list of things I want to do to you? And give you a day or two to think the list over before it happens?”

“I…” He considers it. “That might help.”

“Okay. Then I’ll do that. But now, you should tell me what you pictured.”

It bursts out of him. “Please, let me knot you, let me try to be inside your pussy again. I’m going to die if I can’t. I’ll be so good, I need you—”

“Of course,” she soothes, smiling. “We’ll do that. You can be inside. I’m sorry. I only wanted to taste you, Alpha. I’m a tease, I can’t help it. I like the way you want me. I like to drive you a little crazy.”

He shakes, clutching her to him. And then he is tugging her from the shower, ripping a towel from the wall so hard that the towel holder comes straight out of the drywall and clatters to the floor, proceeding to dry them with a single-minded speed and determination that makes Rey laugh.

As soon as she’s safe and clean and toweled off, he lifts her like she said she wanted and carries her to his bed, laying her down, glorying in pinning her with his weight and having her.

“You have me, Alpha.” Her voice is quiet, private, only for him. “What did you picture? What do you want?” Her eyes are dark in the shadow of his bed, her hair dark and wet.

_Kiss me when I was fifteen. Go back somehow and kiss me then, when I needed you. It all went wrong without you. _

“Touch me,” he says.

Her delicate ribcage feels precious under his hands, and at the foreignness of that delicacy, his eyes become damp. He’s allowed to be this close to her, to touch her naked body, to touch all her skin at once with his.

She’s pulling him in, tangling their limbs. It feels good to her, too. He can tell by her scent and how she moves. He’s putting that look on her face. She’s getting lost in pleasure too.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to even pinch you again.” 

“You won’t. We’ll make sure,” she pants.

“How?”

Rey gently turns him so he is sitting against the headboard and spreads herself open in his lap. “Use your fingers. Make sure I’m opened up.”

A feeling in his abdomen goes weighty when he slides his hand down and touches her with his fingers. He strokes through her pubic hair, tugging on it gently. Fuck, his hand is between a girl’s legs, and she’s biting her lips and shifting and panting with anticipation.

He wants to give her more. “Can I…?”

“Ben, please.” She’s the one begging, now. “I need it. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted you to touch me.”

He slides his fingers through her folds, and feels slickness that isn’t water. It’s thicker and more slippery and when he feels it, it’s like a jolt of recognition. It calls to him.

“You’re making slick for me?” 

“Yes, Alpha.”

He finds her entrance and dips his middle finger inside, and forgets to breathe at the scorching heat of her. Rey shifts her hips to meet his hand, clutching his shoulders. 

He nuzzles what skin he can reach—her neck, her breast. He moves his finger in and out, feeling her. 

_Fingering her_, he thinks. _My finger is fucking her._ His hand is drowning in her slick as he adds another finger, and then another, stretching her for him. Not pinching her.

She kisses him now, desperately moving over him. Whining and panting against him as she reaches for orgasm herself, her breasts moving. She gets single-minded, closing her eyes and moaning. “Ben, fuck. Your hand. Make me come. Please, make me come.”

Breathless, fascinated, he continues just the thrusting of his fingers, and their steady relentless motion makes her come, just like that, with long, intense spasms that shake her entire body, and he can _feel_ it, unmistakably—he can feel her coming inside, like a warm fist clenching his fingers.

“Oh,” he says, stunned.

Her orgasm eases and she collapses in his arms.

His heart squeezes tightly. He made her come on his hand. He made her feel good. It was easy.

Her hair falls down over his chest—he’s never felt that before, strangely cold and ticklish, dripping water. Her slick is so thick it drips down his fingers to his wrist, and coats her thighs.

He needs to be inside. 

“Rey,” he urges. He removes his hand, gripping her waist and slides her forward just a few inches, coaxing her with his hands on her waist, and she reaches down and slots him against her—

He hisses at just the feeling of her slick, her heat around the head of his cock.

“Ready?” She cups his face with her hands.

He freezes again for a moment, breathing harsh. He hurt her last time. 

Watching sharply for signs of pain, he presses in an inch, but his mate only bites her lip and makes a little sound with every desperate, greedy breath. She is spread wide in welcome.

It just takes the slightest pressure from his hands for her to slide all the way down, stuffed thick with him, and this time it doesn’t hurt either of them. And he’s inside her again, as deep as he can be.

Ben stares at her, slightly shocked at how easy it was.

”Good?” she asks teasingly at his expression. “Should I stop?”

His hands turn to iron on her hips. “No, don’t stop.”

So she moves, circling her hips, and the feeling of movement is so good that he cries out in surprise, urging her for more with his hands. Ben looks between them, at the visual proof of how she’s taking him. Her perfect pussy. He’s really fucking her. Fuck.

He wants to—

He needs to... he’d always imagined curling above another, protective and shielding and tending, giving himself with his own movement.

“Rey, I want—”

“Hmm?”

“I want to... be on top of you.”

Rey smirks. “Take what you want, Alpha.”

A moment to process that. Another moment to double check that she means it. Then he flips her over, maybe too roughly, her hair spreading out on the sheets and her breasts bouncing as she settles.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes as he straddles her, desperate to be back where he belongs, his body knowing what he needs better than he does. 

Rey is grinning up at him, absolutely unafraid. One of Rey’s arms twines around his neck as the other goes to his cock, notching it to her wet, searing pussy.

He fills her up. Feels her from the inside, clenching around him, deep where he belongs, surrounded by her wet hot slick again. 

Rey smiles at his expression, squeezing the hand she has entwined in his. “Feels so good, Alpha.”

Inside her, he trembles. If he moves, the friction is so perfect the avalanche will engulf him. He kisses her sweet smiling mouth as well as he can. 

“Perfect. Omega, you’re perfect.”

Ben moans at the first thrust, his restraint like words written in sand, eroding at the first wave. He can’t help it, it feels so fucking good to move in her as fast and hard as he needs to, the friction is incredible. He can’t stop or even slow down, and he doesn’t want to.

Rey moans puts the arm around his neck up against the headboard so she doesn’t hit her head on it with the strength of his thrusts. Her other hand is tight in his hair, demanding.

Sex is like diving deep in a pool after always wading in the shallow end. He gives himself over to it.

He’s an animal, driving into her, and the slippery joy of it banishes fear. She’s an animal, too, heavy-lidded, panting and making small, fucking hot little breathy cries every time he moves that sends a spark of arousal shooting to his glans. Her legs are hooked around the back of his legs, urning him, and it strikes him deeply, that she really wants him, that this feels good to her, that he’s making her feel good just with his body. 

His thrusts are like demanding her complete attention over and over.

_Look at me, accept me, take me, take all of me, the good and the bad, even the parts that pinch and the parts that don’t feel good. Tell me you have room for me, even if I’m too much._

And Rey, she takes all of him, every inch, like she’s made to be his mate. “More,” she chokes.

“More?” he growls.

Rey nods, whimpering at his every quick thrust now. He made her come and she’s so beautiful and he’s fucking her and she fucking loves it.

“You like it?”

“You feel so good, Alpha. Let me have your knot.”

Hearing those words from her mouth, he couldn’t possibly control himself another instant—his knot plumps and locks behind her pubic bone as he comes deep and long inside her. His orgasm washes away everything for a time, all reason and all fear.

“You’re mine,” he murmurs when he comes back to himself. “Don’t be afraid.” There is no brain between his ears anymore; the most important thing in the universe is to keep her right exactly where she is, safe on his knot. “You’re doing so well. But you can't move.” 

It’s important that she knows she can’t move. He knows it instinctively, and he needs her to know it too, needs her calm and pleasure-drunk and happy.

Rey laughs quietly, breathlessly. “I know. Who’s first time is it, here?”

“It’s mine,” he says, smiling too. He feels high with his orgasm and how he’s still pulsing into her. “But I know what you have to do.”

“You do?”

“You have to stay still and take it.”

“I do?” she asks teasingly, and she deliberately wriggles underneath him, and seems delighted when he instantly pins her with his weight and arms to stop her.

His voice slurs with his continuing orgasm. “Yes, you do. I’m not done filling you up…” At that, he trails off—saying that while experiencing the sensation of his balls pulsing into her, each little flash of orgasm, is thrilling. “So you have to stay still. You have to be good for me.”

“I’ll be good, Alpha.”

“Fuck, Rey.”

“How does it feel?”

“It feels…” He will be drunk forever on the feeling of being a part of her, on the way her body is so greedy to keep him, the way she feels around him. “It just feels good. Only good. It doesn’t hurt.”

Rey smiles, cradling his face with one hand. He turns into it, presses his lips against it, the way he’s seen people do in movies. 

That feels only good, too.

He doesn’t know if he should say it. If he should try to hold his feelings back, or downplay them. He doesn’t know what normal people say, or how they feel.

But pouring everything he is into her, comforted by her scent and nearness, eyes rolling back with the continued perfection of it, he just wants to give her everything. To tell her how he feels as soon as he feels it. He’s naked to her, and it comes out in a dreamy sigh.

“You feel like home. My home. I’ve been waiting... so long for you.”

He can feel her clenching around him as her breathing picks up and stumbles. 

“It was all worth it. I love you.” He presses his forehead to hers, so happy, so lucky.

Rey sneaks her hand down between them, panting under him, rocking into him. He pulls back to watch. Rey’s eyebrows are pinched together, her mouth slightly open. Her eyes are damp and full of longing.

“You feel it, too.”

He rocks his knot into her, urging her on, as desperate as she is. 

“Stay like this, just like this. Be my mate,” he pleads. “Be my wife.”

Rey calls out and comes, and this time he can feel her coming on his cock, squeezing him in pulses that steal his breath, the sweetest victory he’s ever tasted. She comes with him inside, helplessly milking him, quaking. His body makes her feel good.

They lay quiet through the last of his rut.

She didn’t answer his proposal. But Rey orgasmed the moment he asked her, and when he says he loves her it makes her touch herself, and that can’t be a bad sign. Hope sears inside him.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. “I love you.” He loves saying it. He’s waited his whole life to say it and mean it. And he thinks—from feeling the way she clenches again when he says those words—she needs to hear it, too.

Ben is still steadily giving himself to her in pulses, lulled by the decadence of her warm skin. His weight is pressing down her abdomen deliciously, but his forearms hold most of it. He rolls them to their sides so he can lay down and burrow into her, holding her tight in his arms.

Him, the one who was always alone, who always stood apart. The one who no one has ever liked or chosen before. And he is now the one intertwined so tightly, alive everywhere. The one held so closely. Allowed inside her body, stretching her while he fills her with everything, pulses of his soul. His most forbidden and private and sensitive part cradled safe within hers, surrounded and welcomed.

She thinks he’s handsome and she likes him. He is part of her.

Ben is grateful for the pillow, so when his eyes leak, he can just press his face down and let them come.

Rey rubs his back, his neck, scratches her nails soothingly through his hair. And he cries more, and thankfully the tears come pretty silently. He feels so lucky, yet angry and sad at the injustice of so many years without her, and he feels strangely, sickly jealous of himself. And relieved that nothing horrible happened.

“It’s okay,” Rey soothes.

It’s been a long few days—a long few weeks, years—and he’s not used to anyone being near him when he’s so vulnerable. He’s not used to being attached. Part of someone. Completely bare to someone.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, exhausted. “I just missed you so much.”

“You missed me?” she asks, sounding nearly asleep.

“In the years I didn’t know you.”

She doesn’t respond for a long few breaths, carding his hair. When she finally does, she’s very quiet.

“I missed you, too.”

His heart kicks and he presses his face to breathe in her skin.

They drowse, locked together.

  
  


They wake up locked together, too. 

If they stayed together this way for months, holding each other, he could never hope to give her everything he’s saved for her over all the years. All the love.

All his life’s tender feelings are rolled up, a heavy metal weight in the center of his chest, and he has to give it to her. All of it. He’s waited so long to express it. Saved it all up.

And maybe for that reason—that he has so much inside him to express—when his knot finally deflates, he actually remains hard, and instinctively he moves in her again, and it feels so good that he tears up again, giving himself to her again. And she holds him through all of it, and she comes when he does, like she’s really his life’s mate.

They go to sleep feeling wanted.


End file.
